Kananaskis - Tombstone 2 Day Backpacking Trip

Hey everybody, welcome along for another adventure happy video. We are just getting into Kananaskis country. It is a quarter to nine in the evening. You can see the sun's still up. It's um, it's the what third week of June there boats? Yeah just about the summer solstice. Just about the summer solstice so we've got a lot of light left still which is good because where we're headed, hey Danny, where we're headed is Tombstone Campground. It's a backcountry campsite here in Kananaskis but to get there we're looking at hiking about nine kilometers once we get to the trailhead. So that's about a half hour away still. So yeah we're looking at uh not starting to hike until about 9 15 this evening. Yeah night hiking so I mean we picked a good time to do it because yeah it's pretty much as long a day as we're gonna get. Oh god sorry if I'm making anyone feel car sick. It's hard to keep this thing steady while we're driving. Yeah so welcome to Kananaskis country. Um beautiful area we haven't had a lot of opportunity to explore yet. We've done a couple of trips here in the past but um yeah this is going to be a new one for us. So Tombstone Campground um it's kind of one of the campsites along the Elbow Loop but we're not taking the Elbow Loop. That's uh it's like a 35 kilometer sort of uh very popular loop trail through uh and uh along the uh Elbow River Valley. But this is kind of a shortcut to the mid point of the loop. We're gonna park just on the side of the uh the side of the highway and um sort of walk in. So we're gonna be meeting our friends Brian and Lisa out at Tombstone. Um they got out of town a little bit before us probably like an hour and a half or so before us. Um so they're probably gonna beat us to the campsite um depending whether they stop for dinner or anything. We did not. We were came prepared so we uh ate in the car along the way and uh yeah just um we knew we had some sandwiches in the car along the way because we knew we were going to be getting out late so we wanted to be able to just throw the packs on and hit the trail. Um start heading for heading for the campground. Usually you get to see a lot of uh wildlife along this stretch of road. This is highway 40 that runs north that's south through Kananaskis. Um I don't see anything yet nothing yet but I don't think we've ever driven down this way and not seen at least some deer and stuff on their on the highway. So I'll get some video if anything does come popping out here. Hopefully not right in front of me. Hopefully not. Just missed him. Mama bear and two cubs just went scurrying across the road into the bush there. The babies were so cute. Four bears. Four bears so far on this trip. That's the fourth bear we've seen already on this side of the highway here. And three deer. And three deer. No one really cares about deer though. No. Except for tourists and family. Yeah that's true. We love to feed them. Yeah. By the way if you're watching this don't feed the bears. Yeah poor decision. Or the deer. Yeah the deer are bad enough but definitely not the bears. So we are obviously in bear country here. Um people pulled over. When you see people pulled over on the side of the road in Kananaskis it usually means you're gonna see a bear. There he is. Big guy. Another grizzly. Big old grizzly bear there. Yeah you'll see these guys a lot around here. They just sort of wander along the side of the road just lunging on the flowers and berries and stuff. He's coming right over towards us. Wow. Hey dude. I could sit here and watch this guy all night but we do have some hiking to do so enjoy your dinner. Hi bear. Five bears. Yeah so we've seen five bears um since we caught onto highway 40 here which was about 60 kilometers ago. And all of them grizzlies I'm pretty sure. Yeah yeah so a lot of grizzlies in the area this evening. Um if you're gonna see bears this is usually the time you're gonna see it actually. It's sort of like twilight or early in the morning when the sun's just kind of coming up. Uh yeah so we're just kind of watching out for the turnoff to um the uh Elbow Valley Recreation Area. I think it's called. Well Valley Trail. Trailhead. Um something like that. That's that's kind of where we're headed. That's the trail that we're going to be taking up. Uh it goes up past Elbow Lake to Tombstone. Yeah this might be it coming up right here because the uh the trip data said it was about uh 60 kilometers or 61 kilometers in from the from the turnoff to highway 40. We're getting pretty close there so it should be coming up any minute now. Yeah so bear sightings always cool. This looks like us right here actually. Excellent. All right so yeah we're gonna get our stuff all together and get hiking. I'll uh probably shoot a little bit more once we get once we get moving. Yeah no kidding. That's how we saw that grizzly like a kilometer that way. Yeah just up the road there so there are certainly some bears in the area. We're gonna make some noise as we're walking Yeah so here we are. Elbow Lake Trail. Elbow Lake 1.3 kilometers. Sheep Trail 6.1. Um yeah so up this general direction is where we're headed. Not sure how much I'm gonna stop to film. It is 9 30 now. Sun's you know going down. Has the potential to get a little bit dark what with us being walking through the forest here. Apparently it goes out into a valley though. Yeah it um I guess a forded section on this hike is going to be pretty uh short and sweet. A little steep um but once we get up through the through the woods there's a nice um sort of like nice nice valley up at the top there that uh will be pretty nice but will also be primo bear territory um right when it's like primo bear time. So yeah we're gonna definitely be chatting making a lot of noise. Don't want to sneak up on a bear out here. Okay my breathing has already picked up so yeah um yeah so five bear sightings on the way in. Um yeah I don't know. Bears can sometimes get a bad rap. A lot of people are very afraid of them. I'm not sure necessarily that's the uh right approach to take with a bear. I think just a healthy respect is more what you want. Um little bunny up there. Um yeah bears I feel like they don't really want to hurt us. They mostly just want to be left alone. They don't want to feel threatened so as long as you approach them with uh healthy respect. Give them their distance and just try to avoid um sneaking up on them. Especially if they've got cubs. I think most people are going to be just fine. Also just in case though carry bear spray if you're going to be out in uh in the Canadian Rockies at all. Um no matter what we're doing day hike overnight or whatever we always um yeah we always have a can of bear spray kicking around just in case. Better safe than sorry. So we're just getting out of the car and straight up the hill. Um as you can tell from my breathing haven't adjusted to having the pack on or anything yet. Um so it feels like really hard going right now. Um it does seem like it's gonna be pretty nice though once we get up here a little bit. I'll check in when we hit Elbow Lake because it's supposed to be quite pretty. So yeah see you guys shortly. Quick look at Elbow Lake as the sun is setting. Looks like a beautiful little camping ground actually. Um but we've got uh what probably another seven kilometers or something to hike before we can lay our heads down and rest. So we're gonna keep moving. I just wanted to show you the lake real quick. Yeah uh there will be some drinking to be done when we get where we're going. On a note we just passed a group of four girls. Yeah. That were I think on their first backcountry camping trip. I would guess because not many people bring roly coolers on uh backpacking trips. Two big Coleman roly coolers. Yeah so I think they're in for a pretty fun night if those coolers are stocked full of liquor like they should be. I'm sure they'll have a good time. Um yeah I just hope that some of the good folks here at uh Elbow Lake tell them a little bit about bear safety. Well with all the bear sightings we've seen in the area I would hate for something bad to happen tonight if they don't properly store their food and stuff. Unfortunately there is bear lockers up at these campsites so they shouldn't have a problem with that. Yeah so it's a nice night um it's probably like 13 degrees or so. I felt a little chilly when we got out of the car and started hiking but now that we're moving it feels just perfect for trying to pound the miles as quickly as we can so we can get to the campsite. Yeah I think we got most of the elevation out of the way so it should be pretty flat so we should be able to move pretty quickly. I'm not sure how dark it's going to be. I don't think it's going to be like pitch black by the time we hit the campsite but it might be getting pretty close to that. I would expect us to be setting up our tent and stuff in some legit darkness so headlamps are a key when you're going to be pushing it a little late in the day. So yeah nice little lake. Some people doing some late night fishing over there. Starting to get a little bit dark here. Probably going to be breaking out the headlamps pretty quick. We still have about two kilometers to go I think so I mean we're moving pretty quick but it's just a race against the sun and looks like we might be losing. A pretty beautiful little part of the world though and bang for your buck as far as hiking the area goes. It's pretty sweet. Lots of beautiful mountain passes up here with great views all around them so very cool. The valley is beautiful. Yeah it is. You guys probably can't see much of anything. Yeah getting pretty dark so we got to keep moving. It's about uh nine o'clock in the morning on Saturday now. We got into camp what like 10 30 last night? 10 after 11. 10 after 11? It was a little dark when we got in. Slept on the headlamps, set our um in the dark. Had a fire. Yeah fortunately the brownies were out here a little bit before us so like all the firewood and we're getting some um tinder set up. So we can have a fire. Got that going. Had a couple of drinks. It was good. It was nice. Nice. Yeah it's probably about four degrees. That is a little chilly. Um yeah it's like four degrees. Probably could stay like that pretty much all night. Rained for about two minutes earlier this morning. Yeah we got up about an hour ago and it was blue skies. I think I'm about to finally get started with the day here with some coffee and some breakfast. Yeah we're usually early risers. And we didn't go to bed until like 1 30 or so. So it's about time to get up now I think. So I guess Brian and Sam do have the uh idea for a little day hike um from here. A little outing. Get a couple of lakes. Maybe scramble up onto a on a couple of rigs so. So that's some cool video for you guys to see for sure. A nice little creek running through our campsite here. Well beside our campsite I should say. Through it probably wouldn't be as nice. There's our water source. There's our tent. That's Brian and Lisa's tent in behind us there. Fire pit. Our picnic table. This is a very well appointed uh backcountry campsite. All the sites have picnic tables, fire pits. There's a giant bin of firewood. Yeah so pretty well stocked. So nice little spot for sure. Um we've got a nice big uh breakthrough skies right above us here. It was really nice to look up watch the stars actually see this opening last night. I guess I had a deer friend last night. This was his his home I think. Kind of skittered off after we got here but yeah he'd been hanging around sort of watching us. Got a campsite down here. There are quite a few nice big campsites well spaced out. Yeah this is gonna be fun. This is a really nice place to uh really nice place to set up. Um getting in here took us a little under two hours. It's two hours and 40 minutes or an hour and 40 minutes or so. Um we covered 7.1 7.71 kilometers and um uh and we were moving at about 4.9 kilometers an hour according to the gps. Which is pretty good. That's pretty fast. Five is it's pretty awesome. We were um obviously racing against time there trying to trying to uh trying to get as much as far as we could with the light. And we did sort of just make it like we um we got to camp and and um got to camp and uh just left the headlamps on after that. Sounds like I'm the only one up at this point. Everyone else seems to be still packed up in tents or they got up really early and they're doing something right now. At the moment it seems like it's just me out here. So wind's picking up a bit. That's a little chilly but I mean it's a nice bright sunny day and probably like 14-15 degrees celsius out. This is kind of what we walked up through yesterday just along this path here. Looks a lot nicer now but I can actually see it's not just dark shadows on the horizon so awesome. Anyways I'm gonna go pull the uh all the uh food and stuff out of the barrel lockers. Get my coffee going because it is about that time. Okay here's a better look at what we couldn't show you last night. This is the same trail that we came down to get to uh the campsite. We're doing a little hike out to Ray Lake, uh Ray Lake and Sheep Ridge. I think we're going to try to hit both. It's about noon right now so we're getting a little bit of a late start but anyways. Behind me there is where Toothstone campground is. Wind's picking up a little bit. I hope you guys can hear me. We made it to Ray Lake. Check this out. So I guess you're actually allowed to random camp back here which is pretty cool. There's a couple of little camp spots where we just came in. This ridge is sort of overlooking the lake here. So I think our next plan is gonna try to uh scramble up this ridge here and to see how high up onto this thing we can get. If we can get up to the top and get some cool views of the uh surrounding area that'd be pretty awesome. So I think that's what we're gonna try for. First things first though, time for lunch. Got some pizza wraps. Pretty quiet here right now. We're the only people out here. How was the hike Danny? Yeah. Yeah. So it was about 4.7 kilometers that we covered in an hour and 20 minutes or something like that. So not bad. Not bad. Decent little day so far. Yeah it's just beautiful out here. It was pretty chilly with the wind when we started out but right now it's just sunny and calm and awesome. This is a pretty cool little lake. I definitely want to come back here and do some camping. Very peaceful. So anyways I'm starving so we're gonna do some lunch right by the way here. I'll uh get some video when I get up a little bit higher. I'll show you guys some views hopefully. Pretty steep scramble to get up to where we're headed. We're just climbing up this sort of dry creek bed. A little bit of loose rock. Pretty steep grade. Views are worth it though. Looks like it's mellowing out a little bit but that's where we're headed. Here's the video when we get to the top. Feels like the rain could be coming any minute now so we're gonna turn around and start working our way back down the ridge. But uh you can get an idea of how far we came. There's the lake down there. Got a view of where we're at. Worth the effort to scramble up here. And um yeah it's getting a little hairy just going a little further than this. So we're gonna pack it in start heading back down towards that ridge meet up with the girls and get a move on heading back to camp I think. All right working our way back down. The base of that cliff there is kind of where we made it to. Yeah Brian and I made it to. Let's see. I don't know if you can tell but there's some rain falling just uh through this valley here so it looks like it's creeping up on us. We are gonna start heading back to camp pretty quick here. Might see if we can't just find a shortcut going across here. There's gotta be another trail leading back. Yeah right down through there. I'll hook back up to the uh hook back up to the trail. You can see I don't know if you can or not there's a there's a creek that runs along there that heads right back to where the campsite is. There's a tombstone there. Over here are the uh sheep lakes. We were thinking about going out there as well. Now that the weather's starting to turn we're not gonna do that especially since standing up here looking down on them we can tell just uh they don't quite compare to Ray Lake there. So yeah we're heading back heading back to camp to uh to eat some stuff and drink some stuff. I forgot there's other people here just until just now. There's a lot people here now. It's like pretty much full up. Back at camp. Danny and Eric showing on the hammock. Got our uh little porch set up here. Got a nice little fire going. A little bit of vino. Lisa has some rye and diet Dr Pepper. Cheers. So we knocked off about 12.2 kilometers today round trip. Getting out to Ray Lake and then scrambling up to the uh scrambling up to the ridge behind it. So it was I don't know it was pretty good. We knocked off about a thousand feet of elevation in a kilometer there on that scramble. So it was a little hard going. Um we got some serious wind and a little bit of rain slash snow on the way back down. So yeah oh my god it's such a good day. Mostly great weather but yeah a little bit of uh rain slash snow on the way back down. Which you know is kind of what the way it goes sort of part for the course when you're uh in Alberta. Yeah love this campsite here at Tombstone. It's awesome. Got a picnic table and a fire pit and a backcountry site here in Alberta. That's pretty rare. That's true. Exactly. We don't have to make nice with people. Sometimes that's fun but sometimes sometimes it's nice just to be. Yeah nice big site. Lots of room. Um yeah it filled up pretty good here. I think there's probably about a dozen tents kicking around. I don't know maybe eight tents kicking around right now. Um but yeah the tents the sites are all spaced out a little bit. We got no neighbors really so we got this whole area to ourselves. So we're gonna be loud and obnoxious and drunk. Yep. Brian's getting some more wine from the cooler aka the creek. Got some shield. It's gonna be a good night. So on our way home there's uh Tombstone Mountain hidden in the clouds there a little bit. Try to get a couple of good views at the mountains and stuff that we missed on the way in because it was so dark. Look right over there at the uh little day hike we did yesterday. Kind of up to the base of that right there. Yeah. Anyways you can see there's a little more snow up on the mountains right now. Yeah that rain that it dumped down here it was dumping snow up up there so these guys over there were definitely not that snow covered when we got here. Yeah everything was looking pretty clear but such is being in the Canadian Rockies. It's uh technically summer now first day of summer today um but still get snow any day so any day of the year in the mountains. Yeah for sure. So what'd you think of Tombstone Danny? Really good. Yeah? Nice camp spot. Very quiet. Beautiful scenery. Yeah. Easy walking. It was nice. What did you think? I loved it. Um yeah so definitely the um part of the backcountry campsites go it's kind of rare to get ones where there's fire pits at every site. There's a big dock of firewood all that stuff so picnic tables yeah it's very well well stocked it was easy to get in we'll finish up at around 27 and a half kilometers for the whole weekend so yeah we didn't crush an insane amount of mileage or anything but still very fun got to see some nice scenery. Yeah saw some bears on the drive in didn't see any out on the trail had some yeah not yet um we uh had some deer in our camp saw some really fat marmots on the hike yesterday yeah a couple of wildlife sightings anyways.