I Took The Path Less Traveled By: Tornado Mountain July 29, 2020 Dutch Creek, Alberta

So today we tackled a big one. Tornado Mountain is the first mountain over 10,000 feet north of the U.S. border in the Canadian Rockies. I got a first good look at Tornado back in the spring when we hiked Thunder Mountain and today we got to hike it. The approach on this hike is grueling, it consisted of a 12-13 km bike ride on a road that could have been drive-able 5 years ago pre NDP. The NDP wanted to limit quadding in these areas and dug out these huge burms in the road about every 50-100 meters. I think we counted over 70 of them. So on the way up we had to dismount our bikes and walk over each one of them. On the way back we could ride over them. Once we dropped our bikes we were actually on the GTD (Great Divide Trail). It was actually a really pretty hike through the trees at that point up to the Col which is the Alberta/B.C. border. From the Col we had a pretty steep exhausting hike up the remainder of the mountain. There was some tricky route finding involved and eventually we summited and boy was I tired, and not looking forward to the hike down and bike ride out. Well after re hydrating a bunch and eating the trip out wasn't as bad as anticipated. It still made for a very long day and a hike that I can honestly say is a one and done and that I probably won't do that again. I would do it again if the approach on bike could have been driven....thanks NDP.