It was another great day in the mountains. We arrived at Baldy Pass parking lot shortly before 9:00 am, where we met with Suzy and her friends. The temperature at the parking lot was 7℃, but the blue sky and the sunshine held the promise of warmer weather. There were three cars at the parking lot, but we had the trail to ourselves all the way up to Baldy Pass. It took us about an hour to reach Baldy Pass, where we had a short snack break.
None of us did this hike before, so we were not quite sure what to expect past Baldy Pass. It happens that there is a well-defined trail through the forest that was marked with orange ribbons. We had no problem reaching the tree line, then the real fun started. We had to climb a very steep slope finding our way up through scree and rocks. Although it was steep and rocky we did not have to scramble.
We arrived at the top of Midnight Peak at 11:40 am, just to discover that it was a very popular hike today. There were other people arriving shortly after us, and at one point the narrow summit became quite crowded.
We had lunch enjoying the 360-degree view. We spent about an hour on the top, eating, talking, and walking along the ridge. There was little or no wind, so the time spent there was very pleasant. Instead of coming down the same way, we decided to be adventurous and tried the loop. Like I mentioned before, none of us has done it in the past, so we had to find our way down. We followed the north-west ridge down to the drainage. We could see the tiny trail going down the drainage from the top. The way down was easier than the way up. Following the drainage, we reached Baldy Pass trail within 50 min.
More flowers start to appear. We have seen clematis in the forest, yellow columbines, calypso orchids, white bog orchids and arnicas along the trail. No wild life was spotted except one huge crow circling around us while we had lunch.
We were back at the cars about 2:45 pm and in Calgary about 3:30 pm. Big thanks to John, Lenard, Corey, Suzy, Mikako, Tomiji, and Kaoru for awesome company, scribe Teresa