Hawk Creek

Animal of the Day - Mountain goats!

On the 50-mile drive to the trailhead, back up near Banff National Park, we spied mountain goats high up on a ridge, above the highway.  A number of mamas and babies.

If you have enlarged the picture you might be able to see the baby's legs under the mama.

Cute baby.

The trail, Hawk Creek, was a disappointment - the best we can say is it gave us a good workout. We had stopped at the Ranger Station to get a trail up-date so we knew the trail was not in good shape - lots of trees down and avalanche debris. There really wasn't much else to do so we went anyway.

We walked out 1.5 miles and then gave up and turned around. On the way back we counted the number of trees that we had to navigate - 104 (X's 2!). This was my favorite - As Frederick was crawling under the tree, a short branch grabbed a water bottle and it got pulled from the pack. It was a good thing I was behind Frederick because he didn't realize that the tree had grabbed the bottle.

The worst kind of obstruction - three trees criss-crossed and at different levels.

Trail crews need to come by with their chain saws.

Canadian Rockies on the drive back.

At almost the same place we had seen the mountain goats driving north, the rest of the herd had drawn a crowd on onlookers by the side of the road as we came south. Birds were entering the holes below the ledge.

We counted 23 mountain goats.

Today's hike:

Length - 3.23 miles

Duration - 2 hours

Elevation gain - 937 feet