Prairie Link Mountain Loop... or so I though

The plan was simple: Park the car, take the trail straight up 2300' to the mountain top, look at the gully and if looked feasible, bushwhack the gully down to the dirt road, run back to the car. This should take about 3 hours.....

Yesterday was a a gorgeous day here: temperature around freezing, no wind and clear, clear sky. So I drove out to the foothills, a 45 minute drive from my house. The nice thing about the foothills is that since they sit a few mountain ranges on the East side of the continental divide, they don't get much snow. The climate there is very dry (as it is in Calgary) with humidity level almost never above 30%

So I started my "loop" by climbing 2300' on a very slippery trail. When I got to the top, the view were magnificent. See picture below and little video.

Here is the little video (I tried to keep it small). It starts looking at the prairies looking East and turns counterclockwise.

Then I put the second phase of my "plan" to execution. I scoped the gully to see if I though I could safely go down there by myself. Getting to the dirt road was only about 2-3 miles. It started with a scree field that was pretty steep but certainly manageable and then everything funneled into a creek (that is now dry and/or frozen anyways). the snow did not look too deep, even on the creek bed. Take a look:

I decided that the gully was both safe and manageable. So down I went. Everything went as expected, the scree was steep and very slippery and the snow at the bottom was only a foot or two deep.

I slowly made it down to the bottom, but then, this is where the plan "failed". With only 200 yards to go and the road in sight, I faced a 30' high cliff. In the spring, this should be a very nice waterfall. I obviously could not jump it. I looked around, and the 30' cliff rose to 100' and 200' cliffs on both side of the creek bed.. Cliffed-out at 200 yards from the road!

I looked around a little, but quickly figured out that the only way out of there was to backtrack all the way up the hill, which I did.

Back at the top, I enjoyed the scenery for a few more minutes and headed back down to the car.

So this is how a 3 hr "loop" turned out to a 4-hour Out-and-back. I hate out-and-backs, but sometimes, I guess this is the only way.

Statistically: the hike took 4:15 hrs and had 4300' of elevation gain.