Day HikesPatrick LatterSeptember 17, 2012Alberta, Summer183 Comments

Chester Mountain

Day HikesPatrick LatterSeptember 17, 2012Alberta, Summer183 Comments

Attempt date: September 16th, 2012Start time: 7:45am Completion time: 5 hours Elevation gain: 1150m (3,772 ft)

Participants: Jimmy Quigley, Patrick Latter

Directions

Drive 60 km west on Highway 1 from Calgary. Turn south onto Highway 40 and drive roughly 50km. Turn right at the Kananaskis Lakes Trail and then right onto Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail. Then drive roughly 18km to the Chester Lake parking lot on the right.

Gear

Food
Water
Warm fleece
Hiking boots
Thermal underwear
Gaiters
Gloves

Trail

As we pulled into the parking lot, the amazing morning light was just beginning to touch the tops of the nearby mountains.

Chester mountain is the same mountain that can be seen in my earlier Chester Lake snowshoe trail post. The trail to the base of the mountain roughly follows the very same snowshoe trail. As we made our way towards Chester Mountain, you could still see the morning frost on the now yellow leaves that covered the ground.

With no snow, we quickly reached the meadow that lay at the base of the gully that marked the beginning of the hike up. If you look at the photo of the snowshoe trail marker from my previous post you can see just how much snow there really was that day.

After making our way up the gully, we reached the col, which seemed to be about 1/3 of the way up. Then we followed the ridge left towards the peak. Looking back towards the col, there was a great view of the grassy meadow of the opposite peak.

With the summit of this mountain being at 3054m (10,017 ft) above sea level, we were feeling the affects of the altitude a bit more than normal for the last 5-10 minutes of the climb. We were happy to have some lunch and enjoy the sun when we finally made it to the top.