It was a lovely day for a January hike, with reasonably good snow conditions for a spike hike to the summit of McLean Hill, EXCEPT for the extremely icy, steep and treacherous descent on the west-facing cutline. This was your scribe's third ascent of this hill, which rises south of the McLean Creek campground and is riddled with dirt bike and quad trails. Like our first two trips, on New Year's Day, 2013 and in February, 2016, there were dry slopes and dirt trails on sunny exposures, but deep snow on cold, shady slopes. Today there was more snow than the other two trips, cooler morning temperatures, and more ice on the cutline, but all three trips were very quiet with mild, sunny weather by mid-day, and no other people, or machines anywhere around.

Heading out on the McLean Creek Trail road (highway 549)

Starting down the closed Highway 549, from the winter gate, at minus 9 degrees, we could see what looked like a body in the snow at the edge of the road. It turned out to be, well, a body, of a deer, with just the hide and a few morsels of meat left.

Dead body on the road looks like a deer

At the 1.1 km mark we should have started up a broken trail, but carried on to the second trail, and found our way back to the first trail.

Crossing a recent cut block high on McLean Hill

We enjoyed some dry trail up to a scenic ridge, then crossed some big new clear cuts, finally reaching the dry summit for lunch in calm, sunny conditions. As before, there were good views of the Elbow Peaks to the west and Calgary downtown skyline to the east.


Ramblers on the summit of McLean Hill

Skyline of downtown Calgary clearly visible from summit of McLean Hill

We followed the cutline all the way out to the road, but to say it was more difficult than the first trips would be an understatement. The TL3 route today was a very treacherous SC5. When even our spikes were sliding on the hard ice just on or under the dirt surface, a couple of us had to resort to some bum-on-ground scrambling.

Concentration by coordinator on extremely steep and icy cutline

The Gem Trek map of this area is pretty accurate, and Gillean Daffern's sketch map helpful, but there are way more trails out there than marked on any map, and our two GPS systems showed different sets of trails. Our route taken never seemed to line up precisely with the trails we were following. (i.e. the trail lines on the map are approximations, while the GPS is very accurate) Nevertheless, our high-tech toys and my memory together served us well, and we found our way around our intended route.

Back on the road, enjoying a 3 degree afternoon, we felt well satisfied by our accomplishment, and the beautiful, sunny day in the high foothills and Eastern Slopes scenery.

George captured our route by GPS

Participants: Norman,Carl,coordinator and scribe, Sid,Linda,Robert,Mohsen,Margo, photos,George,GPS and photo, Tom., new prospective member--hope to see you on many more hikes!