Kananaskis, AB, Canada
31 October 2021
With Richard
Great views but boring approach
It didn’t take us long to wonder whether we had made a good decision after we left Allsmoke Mountain summit to embark on the traverse south towards Volcano Ridge. Although the terrain is pretty simple and demands no more than easy hiking, a fresh layer of snow at least 20 cm deep took way more energy out of us than we had expected. The bush also slowed us down – it was never really bad bushwhacking, but dense enough to be mildly annoying, especially on a poorly defined ridge top where oftentimes you don’t really know where you’re heading. And of course there is no trail along this stretch.
Roughly aiming for the midday sun to navigate south, we put our heads down and kept on trudging over the rolling ups and downs of the ridge, eventually muddling our way up the last steep bit of forest to the open summit knob. I have no idea why this would be called Volcano Ridge… it’s neither volcanic nor does anything up here look like a volcano.
With an unimpeded 360 degree panorama the views from this summit are without a doubt better than those from Allsmoke Mountain. Despite a fabulously sunny and windless day, we had to keep our summit stay short once again because it was just too cold and our core temperature dropped quickly when we weren’t moving.
Thankfully there was no more bushwhacking or getting lost in broad, wooded ridges on our way down. There is an old track that leads from Volcano Ridge summit down into the valley via the upper open slopes. Further down we followed several well-defined trails in the forest, including the Link Creek trail, that eventually brought us to the decommissioned Gorge Creek Road. Then we still had to walk another 6 km before we finally got back to our car and closed this long winter loop.
The Allsmoke Mountain-Volcano Ridge combo isn’t really something I would recommend. There are too many boring stretches in the woods and the bushwhacking up on the connecting ridge is not pleasant. It’s ok as a workout hike, but most people would probably prefer to do them as separate trips – Allsmoke from the north and Volcano Ridge from the south.
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Elevation: |
2125 m |
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Elevation gain: |
1370 m (Allsmoke & Volcano) |
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Time: |
9 h (Allsmoke & Volcano) |
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Distance: |
26.0 km (Allsmoke & Volcano) |
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Difficulty level: |
Easy (Kane), T2 (SAC) |
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Activity: |
Hiking |
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Reference: |
Gillean Daffern’s Kananaskis Country Trail Guide Vol. 4 |
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Personal rating: |
2 (out of 5) |
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