A sunrise hike & wild ice

I was trying to do a sunrise hike. I was gonna hike up in the dark and get to the summit as soon as the sun was rising but clearly I'm a little bit late and once again not on time. I had to stop for gas. Also super windy driving here. I had to slow down a lot because my van is just like a box driving on the road. My drive here was gorgeous. I was driving in the pitch black and just as that like morning dawn twilight started to hit the mountains just kind of emerged out of nowhere. It was gorgeous. I'm like not even a kilometer in but I had to take off my jacket. You know the history of this trail is pretty interesting. I'm hiking up Ha Ling Peak right now and the reason it's actually named that is because as the lore goes Ha Ling was this Chinese migrant worker here in Canmore back in like the 1800s. I think it was the late 1800s and as the story goes somebody bet him 50 bucks that he couldn't get to the top of this mountain and he was like okay bet and he climbed the mountain and this part might be folklore but it said that when he got up the first time people didn't believe him so he went up again the next day and put a flag on top just to make sure everybody knew and 50 bucks was like a lot of money back then that would have been like his year wages or something like that and then from there it was actually named Chinaman's Peak which obviously they changed because that's like offensive but it was named that for like 100 years and then it wasn't until the 90s that they renamed it to Ha Ling Peak. Oh yeah that's the golden hour we were looking for. This is a pretty straightforward hike. It is just a lot of um incline I guess but it's a nice little stair master with a nice little view. I think this is actually pretty good timing though because I'm later than the early crowd but I'm earlier than the late crowd. It's Saturday today I don't always like hiking on the weekend because that's when everybody's hiking but today it's not so bad. Last time I was up here it was like the middle of December and there was this guy trail running like in shorts. This is a crazy mountain to trail run up first of all because it's pretty steep not only that but he lapped us like three times like by the time we got back down to the parking lot we'd already seen him thrice. People in mountain towns will humble you. So this is just the first lookout point this is not the summit but it's a nice spot. You can kind of see grassy down there. I've still got a little ways to go we're going like up there. After these stairs is where the tree line ends and that's where it gets super windy. Also fortunately super pretty. There was this group of like teenage boys sliding. You can kind of see the butt marks sliding from the top all the way down to the bottom and I kind of want to try on my way down. We'll see. Almost there dude. It's actually not too bad like the wind what are you gonna do about it? It's acting a lot worse to be honest. Incredible sitting up here in the sunshine in the middle of winter get how that feels like the vitamin d on your face. I know the summit is going to be pretty breezy so I'm just going to chill here for a sec before I make the final and right now it looks like I'm going to have the summit all to myself. Almost there. Quite the bird's eye view. That's Canmore down there. I don't know if you can hear me or the wind. Beautiful view. Eric is standing up it was kind of scary over the edge. All right I'd call this a successful day. Check it out. Just mountains as far as the eye can see. Great days are out. Hey buddy. Not goats actually. Big horn sheep. They're probably licking the salt off everyone's cars. Here goes the herd. Whoa. Gorge. Cute bugs. Anyway what was I saying? I think I'm gonna go to Canmore get my skate sharpened and then I'm gonna drive around and see if there's any lakes around here that are frozen enough and safe enough to skate on. I love coming to Canmore. I've been here so many times and somehow I still don't really have like the map of it in my head. Like I always have to check directions of where I'm going. Got my skate sharpened. Nice guy at the store said he had to do it three times because they were so dull. I also picked up an ice screw. A used ice screw from Switching Gear. It's like this used gear store. I got a coffee and a really expensive bottle of juice. And it's so cool. They're just eating lunch in there. Oh there's two. There's one. Okay we're gonna try this out. I have all the tools I need to like check the thickness of the ice and everything but if I'm not 100% sure I'm not gonna risk it. I'm just gonna enjoy the view and eat a snack probably in that case. Even if this ends up being a bus I'm so glad I came all the way out here because I got to see that moose or mooses. Moose. I was driving like 70 down this road and there was a bunch of cars stopped in the middle and I was like what the heck guys this is icy like why are we stopping in the middle of the road and I slowed down and then I realized it was because of the moose and it was so cool. I've only ever seen moose from far away. I seriously should have brought snowshoes. I'm like knee deep trying to find a way down to the water. There are a lot of people out on the lake ice fishing today which is a good sign but technically you need deeper ice to skate than you do to ice fish so I'm still gonna check. Are we making our way to the shore or not? I can't tell. There's a little ice fishing hut right there. All right. All right so clear dark ice is a lot more sturdy and reliable so you need less depth with it and shorelines can be pretty fragile like you can see here. Sometimes there's a layer of ice and then like air underneath because of the rocks and stuff the ice will freeze over and then the water levels will dip down so it's just like hollow underneath so I'm gonna start testing like really close to the shore. That hut is right there. All right first test with my brand new used ice screw. There we go. Okay pretty thick. Oh yeah that's pretty thick ice. Let's see. In order for the ice to be safe to skate on you want it to be at least minimum four inches if not like five or six. This paper is just over five inches. I think we're good here. I'd say right here we're pretty safe. Let's uh inquire further. The safest and sturdiest kind of ice is like clear dark see-through ice. This ice is a little bit lighter so you ideally want more than the four inches just to be safe. Oh yeah we're good. This is looking promising. Yep safe once again. For reference I've checked three times since my bag's over there. One last check. I've checked every few meters since the shore and if this one's okay then I feel like I'll be safe to skate in this general vicinity. I'm by myself so I'm being super extra careful. One thing I would also recommend bringing is like the ice spikes you wear around your neck. I didn't have a pair to be honest and I forgot to pick some up while I was in Canmore. I checked actually at Switching Gear but they didn't have any and I didn't have a lot of daylight left. Super thick. Super thick. Too thick to even blow. Okay let's skate a little bit before the sun sets. Freshly sharpened skates. Barely any rust on them anymore. It's crazy that I've had the same size feet since I was 12. Like either I have really small feet now or I had really big feet at 12. Ever think about that? Okay let's give her a try. Yeah shall we? Oh yeah okay here we are. Whoa okay okay. I haven't skated in so long. Exhilarating. Those like four meters I just covered. Dude I should skate more. This is pretty fun. It's nice when you get ice that's like super flat. This ice is actually like really lumpy and kind of hard to balance on but beggars can't be choosers. Okay. Oh this is pretty cool. So glad I came here. Pretty awesome. I'm circling a very small radius. Sort of like a fishbowl um but I'm content. You good? This is like a nice little warm-up. I have a couple lakes on my list that are supposed to have better ice than this. I'm hoping maybe I can either get tighter skates or thicker socks. It's gonna get dark out soon enough. It's already four so I'm gonna get my boots on and get back to the car. That was cool. I'm glad I did that. I didn't get very far but I think it's just because it's like really snowy over there. It's like really bumpy over here. It's extra bumpy over there. The sky is just complete blue. Barely a cloud. This is the warmest day we've had in a while. I think back in Calgary it got up to like almost eight degrees and I was exhausted from work this week. Like it really like ran me ragged this week and oh god scary and I was kind of contemplating not doing anything today but it gets cold again tomorrow and I didn't want to waste this window of like super warm sunny days and I'm glad that I forced it. I got my cool new ice crew. I got a sick hike in this morning. I got a nice little day in Canmore. I got some time on the ice. What more could you ask for? Okay now these say size six and I'm a size seven but they feel pretty loose. Loosey goosey on me. I don't know. I got this insanely expensive juice in Canmore. I don't always let myself buy these but this is like my favorite one. It has cayenne pepper in it so it's spicy and then all this other stuff that's supposed to be healthy. Goodbye ice. I didn't think about how much work it was going to be coming back up. It's like the second hike of the day. Take the fourth exit and stay on Three Sisters Parkway, Alberta 742.