Pa Butte & Crowsnest Ridge/Whale Mtn. Off-Trail hike on 25-Jun-2023

Three of us decided to make the longish drive to Crowsnest to explore new territory. None of us had done these lower summits previously. We piled mountain bikes into Alda's van and set off. The gathering point for Pa Butte is the staging area beside Wedge Mountain in Crowsnest. Here we mounted our trusty steeds for the 4-5km ride into the base. A road winds through a valley and stream with lots of trees obscuring the start point for the target. We went a little further to get a view of the north ridge and decided to retrace to a point where a trail emerges from the creek crossing. Unsure if this would take us to the base we ultimately abandoned the trail after a while to climb through open forest. We eventually emerged onto the southwest slope(our objective).

It soon transitioned from grass to rocks which was the norm for the rest of the trip.

Fortunately, they were not too loose but attention to foot placement was still necessary.

The summit which we reached around noon had wonderful views and we spent time taking in the views (as evidenced by pictures)

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For the way down we retraced our steps but were not able to find our landmark rock(noted on the way up) so we just headed down at what we thought was an open area. It wasn't nearly as open as on the way up but we emerged from the bush exactly where the trail we used in the morning.crossed the creek. This was going to be our lucky day as you read about the next part of our trip. On the road on the way back it was mostly a coast.

We encountered a number of ATV's and pulled over to let them pass. This could likely be a first ascent of Pa Butte as an official Rambler trip.

Second trip of the day was Crowsnest Ridge and a traverse to Whale Mountain. Originally the intent was to use the mountain bikes to cycle an exploration road to Phillips Pass from the east side. Then climb the ridge to Whale Mountain (an outlier of Crowsnest Ridge) and traverse along the ridge to the summit of Crowsnest Ridge. We arrived at the gated road which would not even be accessible to mountain bikes. As luck would have it, there was someone at the house where the gate was located and they opened the gate and indicated we could either drive the van or alteratively mountain bike up the road. A pipeline construction crew had been doing a pipeline installation and had improved the road but were not working on this Sunday. As the road was quite passable for the van to drive, we opted to drive to the low pass.

Here decisions were made as to who would bike the access road to the summit of Crowsnest Ridge (communications towers) and who would hike to the summit.We indicated that by biking the road it may not be possible to do Whale Mountain. James (being an exceptionally strong cyclist) was OK with this, as he really wanted to cycle up and down the access road. Alda and I decided to hike the road as we both wanted to traverse the ridge to Whale Mountain. We set off from Phillips Lake

and climbed to the communications towers summit in 1 hour. Although James was ahead of us at the start he fell a little behind near the top as the road steepened. At the summit with towers we paused for the views and pictures

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A large cross was visible about 150 meters along the ridge so all three of us went over to check it out.

As Whale Mountain seemed a fair distance away, James turned around here and went back to his bike. As the access road had been quite gravelly in places we requested he take it easy on the way down and avoid crashing (which he agreed to). Alda and I continued along the ridge. Interesting terrain with little ravines filled with trees which we had to navigate through On one ravine there was an SC-5 scramble to get down a broken rock band.

It seemed a long way to Whale Mtn. but we finally reached the big flat area on the east side of Crowsnest Ridge. I believe it is called Whale Mtn. by the locals because it looks like a humpback when you approach it from the east

We had noticed an open ridge descent route while driving up to the pass and felt this could easily get us back down to the road. This proved to be the case and we encountered quite open terrain all of the way down. Meanwhile James had descended the access road and was patiently waiting half an hour for us to join him. As it had been a hot day we looked forward to liquid refreshments at Tim Horton's in Blairmore before heading home. It appears that this route is likely a first for Ramblers as it does not appear to be done often by the locals since there is no obvious trail along the ridge after the cross.

An interesting day and as Alda said " a three bagger - not bad for one day.

Thanks to Alda and James for joining me and providing great company on this exploratory trip.

Bob C/S/P