From summit to valley bottom

I had the perfect plan for yesterday: the forecast was bright sun and +6º. Wanting to get out of the Kananaskis and Banff Park areas, I chose Isola Peak southwest of Longview. 800m of elevation along the Forestry Trunk Road. Views would be grand to the Elevators and other nearby peaks. I love getting away from it all. Hower, all did not work out as planned and we were in for quite another type of adventure. Fierce wind gusts up to 150km/hr closed down Hwy 22 from Chain Lakes to Pincher Creek. We debated and continued almost to the planned trailhead. However, at the infamous Hump we knew that there would be no way we'd summit with such gale force winds. In fact, one group member wanted to simply take a photo and was nearly blown out of the car. We had one issue to contend with though: we lost track of the other carpool vehicle and didn't know whether they are ahead of us or behind us. Phone messages were left once back in cellphone range and we headed one highway further north to tackle a valley bottom trail.


After scoping out the maps, our pick for the day ended up being Lower Cataract Creek Falls. Waterfalls = views we though. I would have never picked this as an outing from Calgary, and instead of doing 800m of elevation we only did about 250m. We just wanted to stay out of the wind. The highlight by far was crossing the Highwood River. It's not frozen, and it's wide enough that you wouldn't be able to rock-hop it. We were equipped for a river crossing, so I put on my pleasantly warm neoprene socks and old hiking boots and went on through. Who would be crazy enough to go through the frigid water in February? We were just hoping that the other vehicle had chosen an equally exciting trip for themselves. Surely even if they found our vehicle they wouldn't be crazy enough to follow our tracks.

The Lower Falls were a nice hidden gem. They were far larger than we had ever expected (river would be more appropriate than creek here) and we later found a nice lunch spot along ice formations. Judging by the trailbreaking we had to do, we figured noone had been in this area since the fall and noone else would return to the trail until the spring. Cougar tracks were our only company. We trudged on until our 2:30 turn-around time. A 'summit' shot was taken, even if our summit could only be a little bump maybe 4m higher than the trail. On the way back there was some crackling in the woods, then "I see people". Amazingly enough, seven hours after being separated, we reconnect with the other half of our group 4km in from the road and beyond the Highwood River. They played Mantracker, spotted our vehicle, then walked alongside the highway to determine which side we had gone in.  Finding our tracks on the other side of the river, they made it almost as far as we did.  We celebrated the day at the Black Diamond Pub.