The Hike Up Turtle Moutain

September 25, 2011

"It's always further than it looks. It's always taller than it looks. And it's always harder than it looks."

On the morning of September 24, 2011 the adventure began to conquer something big.We headed to the Crowsnest pass to take on a new adventure; hiking up Turtle Mountain.

A little history on Turtle Mountain, located in the southern section of the Rocky Mountains in Canada near the border of British Columbia. With Turtle Mountain coems an old Indian Legend that says, in 1853, the Blackfoot Indians fought a battle with the Crow Indians at the base of Turtle Mountain. During the battle, large rocks fell off the mountain and killed 200 warriors. The mountain was named Turtle Mountain by the Crow Indians because they saw it moved slowly.

The Indians believed that the spirit Napi had chosen Turtle Mountain as his final resting place by climbing up the mountain and vanishing. This caused the Indians to proclaim peace in the valley forever.

The base of Turtle Mountain consists of coal plus rock fragments known as clastics. The surface of the mountain is folded limestone and dolomite. Over many centuries, water seeping through fissures into the base rock made it unstable.

The east face of the Turtle Mountan gave way and sent large slabs of rock tumbling into the valley on April 29, 1903 at 4:10am onto the nearby town of Frank. This would result in the biggest landslide in North American hsitory. In 100 seconds: at least 76 people were buried alive under tons of massive limestone boulders; three-quarters of the homes in Frank were crushed like balsa wood; over a mile of the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completely destroyed; and a river became a lake.

Prior to leaving the house we packed our bags, filled with water bottles, food, extra clothing, and no sunscreen. We headed out towards the Crowsnest Pass which from our house was about 90 minutes away. From there we headed towards the mountain, we had to make a left into Blairmore (coming from Lethbridge).

As we parked the car and geared up, we headed off. At first the trail was half noticeable, but soon we saw the yellow highlights rocks that would show us the way.

The further we climbed the more beautiful the view got. This first picture is the view of the town Blairmore, and in the distance is the Crowsnest Mountain.

The large pile of rocks Kara and I decided that it reminded us of the warning signal fire from Mordor in LOTR! We didn’t light it on fire, but it still looked cool.

As we continued our walk, we stopped to have lunch on the side of the mountain. From here we had pretty good views of the Franks slide, but knew they would be better the higher we got. The last big of the hike involved actually hiking up the side of the mountain. In some parts we hiked on what is known as scramble, loose rocks.

View from our lunch spot

We finally made it to the first summit, just over 2 hours later. Someone had nicely planted a Canadian flag at this summit. The views from here were absolutely amazing!

"Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb."—Greg Child

From here you can see some of the remaining damage done during the Lost Creek Fire.

Also from the North Peak you can see the way towards the South Peak (2^nd summit) the trail looks a little more rugged but can be done. We stuck to doing the first summit.

After enjoying the views and having a photo shoot on top of the mountain, we made our way back down the mountain, which oddly enough was more work on the leg compared to going up; but going down was a lot quicker than going up.