Today was an adventure! So our over zealous plan today was to take the continental divide from Akamina pass all the way to West Castle or Castle Mountain Ski resort. I had mapped it out and it was about 60km. Last year we had done the triple crown in one day and that was 60km so we thought this was do-able. Well having a trail the entire triple crown sure helped a lot, and this first section was not trailed and was a lot slower than we thought. So first off I got up at 1:40 am to drive and drop off one vehicle at Castle Mountain Ski resort and then make it to Wall Lake trail parking lot to start hiking by like 5:50am. Our group of 6 were all prepared for a long day and we headed up the Wall Lake trail to the pass and then started up the BC/Alberta cutline. We got on top of Mount Rowe in under two hours got a great morning view from there and then continued along the continental divide ridge towards Festubert. This section of the hike was a ridge I had never done before and this is what started to slow us down. There was a part with some boulders and trees that really took the wind out of our sails. It wasn't terrible it just wasn't a nice trailed section where we could maintain a good pace. Anyways we got to Festubert just after 11:00am. At this point I was starting to think we had bitten off more than we could chew, but perhaps this next section to Kishinena (which I had done pre fire) would be faster. Well it was better till we hit the treed area that had been burned and the dead fall and burned trees slowed us again. So we finally hit the south Kootenay pass and some of our party needed a bathroom break so we rested at the South Kootenay pass sign for a few minutes to wait for them. Well after a few minutes we wondered where they were??? So there was three of them and so we started calling for them and looking around for them. But they were nowhere to be found. It was about 1:30pm and so I went up to a lookout point north of where we were to see if they had gone around us and to see if they were up there. I got to this lookout point and could see Kishinena and there was no sign of them. So I went back to South Kootenay pass to meet of with the other 3 of our party. So we thought they maybe went down to the Lone Lake trail, so we headed down there and they were not there either. Anyways at this point we sent two of our party to go to twin lakes encase they maybe got to Kishinena peak and came down Sage pass and then myself and another headed back to Red Rock Canyon. This way we covered all the return methods back to Red Rock (we abandoned out goal of West Castle by this time). Anyways we ran into a friend on the trail back to Red Rock and he hadn't seen our 3 missing hikers and luckily we ran into him because he would help us out and take us back to our vehicle since we had no way of getting back to our vehicle, because we hadn't left a vehicle at Red Rock. Anyways I left to get the vehicle and then came back and by then the other two hikers had come around from Twin Lakes and hadn't seen the other three. So at this point we decided to go to the Rangers and report the 3 missing. We got to the Rangers by about 8:30pm and then sent up a helicopter to look for them. Just after 9:00 the helicopter spotted the 3 missing hikers with about 4 km left coming back to Red Rock from the North Trail of Twin Lakes. Anyways what happed is they stopped for their bathroom break and somehow walked by us at South Kootenay pass without us seeing each other and continued to Kishinena Peak thinking we were ahead of them. They waited on Kishinena for 3 hours before heading down to Sage Pass and back to Red Rock. All ended well but we had a few mothers who were a little excited to say the least. But what an Adventure that ended well, we just had to head back to get our vehicle at Castle Mountain, so I got home to bed almost 24 hours after I had got up for the day. Long day but oh well it was a beautiful windless day in Waterton and that doesn't happen very often!
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| Leaving Home time |
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| Border marker for BC/Alberta |
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| Heading up the cutline looking towards Custer |
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| Huge Cairn on the top of the Cutline |
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| Upper Rowe Lakes |
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| Sun coming up over Rowe |
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| Rowe peaking looking towards Cameron Lake |
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| Looking at our ridge walk |
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| Looking down over Rowe Meadow |
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| This is the section that slowed us down going to Festubert |
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| Final push to Festubert with Glacier Peaks in the background |
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| On Festubert looking down on Lone Lake and Mountain |
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| Top of Festubert |
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| Pretty ridge and valley looking back toward where Lone lake would be |
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| Still found some bear grass along the way |
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| This is moments before the 3 got lost heading to South Kootenay Pass |
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| This is the picture I took at the Lookout to Kishinena, out three lost hikers where in the trees on the ridge at the moment I took this picture |
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| Heading down from the lookout looking towards the Flathead valley where the South Kootenay pass would head to |
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| My dirty legs after hiking through the burned dusty trails |
