 Sanson
Peak
- Canadian Rockies
Monday June 16
2003
Sanson Peak is my
first scramble for this season. It's not really a scramble though,
just a hike.
The day was sunny and
fairly hot. The temperature was such that I didn't really need any
more that just the basic thin layer of dry clothing, even when on
the summit ridge.
I started, like
anyone else should, by going to the Parks Canada office in Banff and
asking about the conditions. I had originally indented on going up Deadman's Ridge. This ridge is closed for now and the foreseeable
future as it traverses a wildlife corridor. Funny though that the
Parks in their infinite wisdom have seen fit to locating a
residential sub development in the immediate area.
I went to the Second
Cup in Banff.
Banff has no Starbucks. I sat down and had a coffee and
decided to take the fire road to Sanson Peak instead of
abandoning the day.
I had the opportunity to bag
two peaks and wasn't about to let a bloody (used by cougars, bears
and wolves) wildlife corridor get tin
the way.
The rest is history,
read on.....
The fire road is
visible from the Trans-Canada highway when you drive east and
are near the Sunshine Village turn off. It appears as a huge zigzag
on the slopes of Sulphur Mountain. The fire road summits at a small
peak called Sanson Peak. This is the site of the Cosmic Ray
Observatory.
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|
Panorama of Sulphur Mountain from
Cascade Mountain
The peaks are marked in the enlargement |
Start by parking at
the Cave and Basin National Historic Site. Then hike
along the Sundance Canyon path. It's not a trail, not unless you
count an asphalt road as a trail. Follow this for 700 meters until
you get to a branch to the left. This is the horse trail and is not
intended for humans. The park prefers that you not use this but I
did. They told me to. You see, you get a different story about which
way to go from each Parks employee you talk to, at least I did that
day.
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|
Map of Sanson Peak access |
The fire road is
another 1.4 kilometers down the way and is a left, like the horse
trail.
Follow this up the mountain.
If you took the horse trail you
would intersect the fire road about 200 meters above the Sundance
Canyon Road/Trail/Asphalt-Scar.
Once on the fire road
proper you can expect easy going on a steady grade with a smooth
surface devoid of rubble. This would be great for Mountain Biking
but again the word is the Parks prefer that no bikes are used on
this fire road.
Hike up the
fire road for an hour or so and eventually after a switchback or two
near the top you arrive at the boardwalk. Yup, that's right a boardwalk. The parks have constructed a boardwalk complete with metal
railings for the tourist to enjoy. This wooden walkway connects the
Cosmic Ray Observatory to the
Sulphur Mountain Gondola Station.
From hear you can
continue another 3.5 kilometers to the summit of
Sulphur Mountain.
To continue on
click here to read my
Sulphur Mountain page.
 n sex we have the source of
man's true connection with the
cosmos
and of his servile dependence. The categories of sex, male
and female, are
cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories.
Nicolai A. Berdyaev
 hat more fiendish proof of
cosmic
irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented
sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all
its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless
tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us
for following orders?
John Updike
1932-, American Novelist, Critic
n asking forgiveness of
women for our mythologizing of their bodies, for being
unreal about them, we can only appeal to their own
sexuality, which is different but not basically different,
perhaps, from our own. For women, too, there seems to be
that tangle of supplication and possessiveness, that descent
toward infantile undifferentiation, that omnipotent
helplessness, that merger with the
cosmos
mother-warmth,
that flushed pulse-quickened leap into overestimation,
projection, general mix-up.
John Updike
1932-, American Novelist, Critic
cosmic
philosophy is not
constructed to fit a man; a
cosmic
philosophy is constructed
to fit a
cosmos. A man can no more possess a private
religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.
Gilbert K.
Chesterton
1874-1936, British Author
©
CanadasMountains.com + Tim L. Helmer
Friday February 08, 2008 11:21 AM
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