Kananaskis, AB, Canada
22 November 2020
With Faisal
Relaxing foothills hike
Our original objective was Allsmoke Mountain, but since my van couldn’t make it up the steep incline on the snow-covered Gorge Creek Road we decided to settle for the next closest hiking option: Mesa Butte. This little foothills peak is a popular objective year round as evidenced by a number of well-travelled trails criss-crossing the area.
Ice on the lower path up made us wish we had brought our microspikes, but the slippery sections were short and we managed without. The trail winds its way through trees and across meadows to the broad summit area where we were surprised to find an improvised campsite complete with fire ring, picnic bench, shovel and hammer hanging on a tree, and even a half-full bottle of whiskey waiting to be put to good use (not by us today!). Apparently someone had spent the night in a tent up here just yesterday…
The views from the top, in all honesty, are nothing to write home about. It’s more about being able to do some hiking in a nice area at this time of the year, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city but without the long drive, that makes Mesa Butte a nice objective in my opinion. But it’s definitely very short – too short for us, so we decided to tack on a few more “bumps” in the area.
Humpty’s Hill, Hickory Hill, Jack’s Hill and Jill’s Hill are four little foothills just east of Mesa Butte. They don’t really stand out for anything and are only around 1500 m high, but for some reason are named on the hiking maps I use. Bob Spirko and Vern have hiked the latter two, while Matthew Clay calls the whole collection “Nursery Rhyme Hills”.
There’s a trail called “Mesa Butte Backdoor” that heads north from Mesa Butte’s summit and then descends east to join a logging road in the valley. The four hills are easily accessed from here, all of it off-trail with some light forest, a bit of deadfall, and stretches of open hillsides. Although the views are again nothing special, it’s a lovely area for some off-the-beaten track hiking. And because the four hills are so close to the logging road, you can pick and choose and go up as many or as few as you want. We didn’t do Hickory and tramping up the other three was enough for us today… although I somehow managed to coax Faisal into hiking up the Curley Sands Trail as well – another bump that sits right by the main road.
Overall a nice little hike and a good workout in a (mostly) quiet corner of the foothills. We didn’t meet a single person all day, but there was active logging going on in the area south of Jack’s Hills, with a scarred landscape and some noise from heavy equipment being the negative side effects.
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Elevation: |
Mesa Butte: 1692 m (my GPS) |
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Elevation gain: |
800 m |
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Time: |
5.5 h |
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Distance: |
13.8 km |
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Difficulty level: |
Easy (Kane), T2 (SAC) |
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Comments: |
Stats here are for the loop that includes Humpty’s Hill, Jill’s Hill, Jack’s Hill, and the Curley Sands hill. |
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Reference: |
Spirko, own routefinding |
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Personal rating: |
2 (out of 5) |
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