SO since I had the day off, we went on a hike. We decided on doing the Mnt. Yamnuska loop. Mnt. Yamnuska is the first significant mountain you see when driving West from Cochrane on Highway 1. "Yamnuska" is native for "wall of stone".
It is an often vertical and overhanging south cliff 360 metres in height and almost two kilometres in width. Geologically, the mountain is noteworthy because of the clear view of the McConnell Thrust Fault that has forced 600 million year old limestone over 100 million year old shale rocks. The harder limestone forms the cliff and the softer shales form the lower layers. Check this and this if you want to know more.
Anyhow. So our plan was to reach the summit. Yes that is the view from the parking lot. Looks pretty steep and pretty far. After walking through an Aspen forest that changed into a Pine forest we came to an open area with a pretty view. Looking up, the top of Mnt. Yamnuska greeted us. Still a long way to go.
Our first awesome view of Mnt. Yamnuska's vertical wall. From here we could see our final destination! The summit!
At one point in the hike. About half a kilometer from the top we needed to use a steel cable to traverse a narrow ledge. I though it was AWESOME! Here you see Sarah hanging on for dear life.
Here you see what the top looked like. We were almost there. It was pretty steep but knowing you would be standing on top of a mountain gave us wings.
YES we made it! 3.5 hours later we were standing on the summit. We devoured our food and after about 20 minutes (it was kinda cold on the summit) we prepared ourselves to go home.
Here you see the path we needed to follow. At one point in our descend we took a wrong turn though. We had the choice, going up or downhill (at that point I was done going uphill, I wanted to go down). After about 45 minutes the trail that we 'thought' were following stopped. There we were, on the backside of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. We decided to back up. But by now, my legs were dead tired. My body is not made to go uphill for a long time. I like to go down, fast, running, jumping from rock to rock. But uphill it was. After another 1.5 hours we were back where we made the wrong choice. But we still needed to go uphill for about 300m. Once over this ridge it was downhill all the way.
It was one of the best descend I ever did. You were walking in loose gravel, riding your own little rock landslide for about 50% of the descend. You get down fast and it is easy on the knees. It reminded me a little of walking in deep snow, or even snowboarding. You can see a shaky video of it here.
SO 6.5 hours later we were back at the car. I was done. Sarah too. Dead tired we decided to treat ourselves with ice cream and pizza. Yes in that order. Life is too uncertain, eat desert first!
