Long hike, hard day. We set out early to beat the mountain bikers to the trails. The mountain bike trails are one directional, and some are made for pedestrians. To be quite honest we couldn’t quite keep track of where we were going so we ended up just taking the shortest route to the start of the trail. Initially I had hopes that past the biking trails the hiking trail itself would be less steep but I was gravely mistaken. This hike in general is just very steep making me savour the flatter portions of it. Since we were heading up relatively early, snow started powdering the trail not too far in. I noticed tracks of another early bird hiker heading up, but soon after noticed those very tracks were also leading back down. The fellow hiker only made it to about the halfway point I want to say before heading back down so we deemed someone was just doing this trail as their version of a morning workout.
We were also surprised to see a “multiuse trail” forking off of Gloria trail at a point. It is named “Magic” and not on any map that we looked at so I am intrigued where it goes. Granted since bikers can take it, I would feel less safe trying to haul myself up it. It is beyond this fork that we made the interesting discovery of fresh cougar tracks in the snow. It was really fascinating to watch the prints follow the trail, and I could see where the snow cracked under its weight. This is also the moment that we started talking rather loudly as we continued along considering it meant the creature was still in the area. It only stayed on the path for a few minutes or so, before veering off in the direction of rushing water. I took a minute to try and trace out the steps to ensure it did indeed continue straight and wasn’t hiding from sight.
At about the halfway mark we stopped for a snack and a small coffee break before continuing on. It gets a bit icy at this point so I ended up putting on microspikes for the extra traction. The icy section doesn’t last terribly long since eventually deeper snow covers it. As we steadily made our way up, the snow continued to accumulate. Eventually we started post-holing our way along the markers with the occasional moments of falling through the snow. We passed by an interesting tree that had somehow managed to fall such that its neighbouring tree caught it completely upright. With its orientation, it looked like the tree was floating, but because of the snow when we took photos it gave the illusion of the tree being firmly into the ground.
The sun managed to creep out of our ascent, heating up the snow on branches and causing it to rain on us. To make it even more of a struggle the last kilometer and a half is even deeper snow, to the point that the trail markers were mainly covered on the way up. We could see old tracks of snowshoers in the snow and we ended up following them up to the ridge. For the most part they were pretty accurate. Every time we turned around we could see a marker on the back of the tree.
The views were lovely and honestly, I would do this trail again :)