Blue Ridge

Calgary Foothills, AB, Canada
27 March 2022
Solo

Easy forest hike

Yet another workout trip in the foothills, nothing exciting but a good option for this time of the year when you want to get out in nature but without avalanche risk or crowds. This trip is very similar to nearby Mount Dyson – good approach trails, lots of forest, very little in terms of views. In fact, I’d suggest combining Blue Ridge with Dyson if you have the time and energy and want to eventually do both.

The Sheep River was conveniently frozen over again so the crossing right at the beginning from Sandy McNabb campground parking lot was no issue – definitely a good reason to do this trip when it’s cold! I followed the same approach as for Mount Dyson, across a nice open meadow, then on Wolf Creek Trail to the north end of Blue Ridge.

There’s even a bit of flagging where you leave the trail and head into the bush, across the creek (can be hopped), and up the forested north ridge. Lightly spaced trees made the ascent pretty easy, but also boring as there are pretty much no views. I first hiked to where the summit is marked, but the true summit actually turned out to be about 1 km further south. It’s only 5 m higher according to my GPS.

I like switching things up so for the descent I went down a gentle ridge on the west side to link up with meadows in the valley that took me north to a trail at Coal Creek. The snow on the trail was surprisingly shallow, so it was an easy plod back to the trailhead. All in all not exciting but a good winter workout loop.

 

 

Elevation:

1915 m

Elevation gain:

960 m

Time:

8.0 h

Distance:

23.9 km

Difficulty level:

Easy (Kane), T2 (SAC)

Comments:

Requires river crossing.

Reference:

Own routefinding

Personal rating:

2 (out of 5)

DOWNLOAD ROUTE (GPX FILE)

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Sunrise over the frozen Sheep River.
This is probably the nicest view in the first half of the hike: Mount Dyson from a large open meadow.
Good trails on the approach.
The beauty of winter hiking.
There’s surprisingly little snow on the southern slopes of Wolf Creek Hill.
Quite a bit more snow on the wide trail in the forest.
Trail marker.
Flagging to denote the turn off to the north end of Blue Ridge. It’s off-trail from now on.
Light forest on the north ridge.
One of the rare views going up: Mount Dyson.
Typical forest view.
Cairn at the true summit (1915 m).
Heading down a west rib in light forest.
Finally some views of bigger front range peaks!
Junction Mountain
Patterson’s Peak (centre) and Trap Peak (R).
On Coal Creek Trail.
View from a lookout point over the deeply incised Coal Creek.

In this section

Kananaskis Allsmoke Mountain Ben’s Hill Blue Ridge Bluerock Mountain Bull Creek Hills Cat Creek Hills & Stony Ridge Channel Ridge Commonwealth Peak Compression Ridge Cox Hill Coyote Hills Cummings Ridge East End of Rundle Etherington-Baril Ridge (Three Cairns) Forgetmenot Ridge & Mountain Gilligan Peak Glasgow North & Garriochmill Peak Green Mountain Gunnery Mountain Ha Ling Peak & Miner’s Peak Hailstone Butte, Sentinel Peak & Iron Creek Mountain Heart Mountain Hell’s Ridge Highwood Peak Hill of the Flowers Holy Cross Mountain Hood, Mount Horton Hill & Horton Ridge Iyarhe Ipan, Swany’s Ridge & Quirk Ridge Jumpingpound Mountain Kidd South, Mount Link Hill & Vents Ridge Little Lougheed Lookout Range to Mount Burke Lusk Ridge Mesa Butte Missinglink Mountain Mist Mountain Mist Ridge Moose Mountain Mount Barwell Mount Bogart Mount Bryant Mount Burns East Peak (attempt) Mount Denny & Mount Potts Mount Dyson Mount Evan-Thomas Mount French & Mount Jellicoe Mount Head Mount Howard Mount James Walker Mount Lorette & Skogan Peak Mount Lougheed I Mount Mann Mount McPhail Mount Muir Mount Quirk Mount Remus Mustang Hills Odlum Ridge Old Baldy Mountain Opal Ridge South Opal Ridge Traverse Packenham Junior Pasque Mountain Pigeon Mountain Pocaterra Ridge Powderface Ridge Powderface Ridge (south route) Prairie Mountain Raspberry Ridge Red Peak Red Ridge Running Rain Peak & Mount Odlum Serendipity Peak & Patterson’s Peak Seventy Buck & Eagle Hill Ship’s Prow Mountain Shunga-la-she & Jägermeister Peak Snow Peak Storelk Mountain Strawberry Hills The Orphan Tower, The Volcano Ridge Windtower Windy Point Ridge & Gleason Ridge Yates Mountain Zephyr Creek Hills

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