On Sunday, August 18, 2024, we summited Mount Hood in Kananaskis. We had planned to climb it in 2023 from the top of King Creek Ridge, the recommended route in the book Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies by Alan Kane. The alternate route is to hike up King Creek, through the canyon, to a place where two smaller creeks meet. Follow the smaller creek that comes from the left to its origin on the slopes of Mount Hood and ascend from there.
Kane recommends accessing the slopes of Mount Hood from King Creek Ridge, with its well-defined trail, rather than hiking up the creek because in the floods of 2013, there was a lot of damage to the trail by the creek and the creek itself was choked with massive amounts of dead trees, bushes and debris that came down with the heavy rains.
Given that 11 years had passed since then, we decided to check it out. Also I read a post by someone who successfully summited Mount Hood in 2017 and then hiked out down the creek. It sounded like the route was in much better shape already by that time.
However, we took Kane’s advice and started by hiking up the ridge first. We wanted to maximize our chances of a successful summit attempt.
I’m glad we went that way because near the top of the ridge, we had one of the strangest experiences I have ever had in the mountains. There was a small group of mountain sheep there, ewes and lambs, which acted so unusually toward us, I’m still not quite sure how to explain it. Details are below in my Trail Report.
I was eager to get back to Mount Hood this year because in 2023, we headed out to climb it but decided to turn around. We got as far as the top of King Creek Ridge and when we looked out across the valley at Mount Hood (the view in the photo above), we realized we were not prepared. We had our dogs with us and we didn’t think they’d be able to do it. The route looked interesting but challenging. We had really only done “hiking scrambles” up to that point, where we had been able to walk a trail most of the way to the summits. This one would clearly require a little more hands-on movement.
We decided to come back without the dogs and earlier in the day to give ourselves lots of time to figure out the scrambling. But then, about a week later, Dan took a bad fall rock climbing and he was out for the summer.
This year, we returned with good health and a lot more experience. The scramble part went very smoothly, with interesting route finding, and we got to explore the creek on the way down. Here’s our route recorded on FATMAP:
Beta:
- This route can be out and back or a loop can been made, like we did, using one trail for the ascent and the other for the descent.
- Parking: Drive to King Creek Day Use Area in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park (Highway 40). We parked along the side of the highway at the base of the trail for the ridge.
- Elevation gain: 1,392 meters
- Distance: 11.9 km total
- Difficulty: Straightforward hiking up to the top of King Creek Ridge. After that, some routefinding and steep terrain, with scramble moves over scree-covered ledges on the rocky slope of Mount Hood.
- Gear: Helmets. We did not need crampons or ice axes. There was no snow when we were there in August.
Permit Required
A Kananaskis Conservation Pass is required to park at the trailhead.
Helpful Apps
- AllTrails – shows the canyon/creek route but I found it very helpful to have the trail map downloaded for the scramble sections on Mount Hood. I used our position relative to the AllTrails map to confirm route-finding decisions.
- FATMAP
Websites
- Bob Spirko – he also took the canyon/creek route. There are some good photos of crossing the creek.
- On-Top.ca – Mount Hood – Great trip report here and the inspiration for our decision to take the creek on the way back.
Books
- Scrambles In the Canadian Rockies by Alan Kane
Trip Report
We headed up the trail into the forest.
Right away the hiking gets steep.
The trail goes up steep meadows…
and up through the trees above.
The first views of the top of the ridge in the distance were encouraging. The trail climbs steeply up the slope and then turns left to follow the top of the ridge toward the high point in the photo.
From the top of the ridge, we get our first look at Mount Hood.
The hiking along the ridge top is much easier and less steep than the trail that brings you up there.
When I saw the meadows in the valley between King Creek Ridge and Mount Hood, I couldn’t believe how bright the fireweed was! Great patches of bright purple!
Note the trail through the fireweed at the bottom of the photo. It comes up from the creek for the canyon/creek route. We took this on our way down.
This is another look over at Mount Hood, the summit in the middle of the photo. It shows the steepness of the meadows and the scree cone leading to the rocky section below the col.
Near the top of King Creek Ridge, a small group of sheep was resting, maybe 30 meters from the trail.
I hoped they wouldn’t be scared off when we walked by. There was a man and his young daughter hiking behind us and I wanted them to be able to see the sheep too.
One of the sheep had a baby laying beside her. As we watched, it moved its head to rest on her back.
The mother stood up and the baby nursed for a moment.
Then the mother started walking toward us and the baby turned to look at us.
I was worried that we were too close, making the mother nervous, so we moved away quickly up the trail toward the top of the ridge.
Near the top of the ridge, we found the descent trail described in Kane’s book. As we glanced behind us, we saw the group of sheep coming up the trail toward us. Seemed odd that they were not at all frightened by our presence.
But we kept our eyes on the prize across the valley and moved down steep, washed out trail.
Dan is heading down the descent trail toward Mount Hood in the distance.
Here is a close up FATMAP image of our route down from the ridge. We didn’t take the dotted line on the map. We found a way to hike down steep terrain without needing to downclimb.
The trail was actually pretty good across the upper slope, once we’d dropped down from the ridge.
I am coming down the first steep slope from the top of the ridge.
A few minutes after this photo was taken, we heard a noise up the hill behind us. The group of sheep was there, each one turned toward us, looking at us.
They had come down off the ridge behind us but surely they weren’t following us. I’m sure it was a coincidence that we were all going to the same place at the same time.
The trail dropped down steeply through a break in the rock below us.
Below the break in the rock, we picked our way down the loose slope. We needed get onto the green rib on the left, with the tint of purple fireweed in the meadows. We could either head down and angle left or traverse left through the trees.
As we contemplated the options, we heard a noise on the slope behind us.
The sheep had come through the break in the rock and were standing not far above us. Again, they were staring at us. It started to creep me out.
The mother sheep moved toward us and knocked a lot of rocks off her ledge which tumbled down near us. Some rocks were the size of footballs. It was clearly becoming a dangerous situation. We took off into the trees, moving through thick branches to try to dissuade the sheep from following us further. Strangest situation!
There was a good trail in the trees and we were able to move quickly across the slope.
We followed the trail across a gully. We didn’t see the sheep again. Maybe they headed down to graze the fireweed.
We were heading to the rib in the middle of the photo.
At the next gully, the trail turns down hill.
The trail is well-defined into the trees and through the forest. As it starts up the other side, through the steep meadows, it is harder to find. But it is pretty obvious where you need to go from there.
This photo looks back at King Creek Ridge. The black arrows show roughly where we came down.
We hiked up through a fireweed meadow. So purple!
Mount Wintour in the background looks like a great aspirational summit. I believe that one requires some belayed climbing. Maybe next year.
We made our way up above tree line to the higher meadows. The route heads to the top of the scree cone above and then onto the rocky slope to get to the col.
Near the top of the meadow.
Almost at the scree cone, we stopped to ponder the route up the rocky slope ahead.
Hiking up the scree cone on a faint trail.
The trail continues to the base of the rocky slope.
Instead of going up the middle gully, which was full of loose rubble when we were there, we followed the trail up steeper but more solid ground on the left.
The green line shows our route from the top of the scree cone up the rocky slope to the col and then to the summit.
Our route more closely matches AllTrails which seemed to be the best way in the current conditions (no snow slopes to climb).
After a few hands-on moves, we get to a place where we can hike up the steep loose slope. Trails and occassional cairns make route finding easy here.
In places, there seemed to be multiple trails and we carefully considered where we wanted to move to on the slope before choosing a trail. Again, AllTrails was helpful with this. Download the route before you leave home.
We took this trail traversing the slope to the right. It seemed to be heading for a break in the cliff above.
Dan is heading toward the cliffs, our last obstacle before the col.
First we must hike up more steep, loose rubble.
Then the slope becomes steeper and its very difficult to gain any ground on the loose rocks in the trough. Instead, we scramble up more solid rock on the side of the trough.
I am working my way up.
On top of the col, we find a trail along the summit ridge.
Initially it heads up onto the ridge but soon drops over a bit below the right side of the ridge to traverse toward the summit, seen in the distance.
There are some side trails up left onto the ridge top but we stuck with the lower trail. The ridge top looked like a bit of a knife edge.
The summit still seems far away.
The trail heads to a trough where it climbs up the summit block.
Finally on top, we find the summit register in the typical pink metal box.
Summit selfie!
We did not want to climb back up King Creek Ridge to return to the road. We know that the trail down off the ridge to the road is very steep. It makes more sense to us to stay low and follow the creek out.
Here we find the trail through fireweed at the top of the creek.
The trail was pretty good going into the trees.
And onto the dry creek bed.
Most of the way, we had a pretty good trail. Sometimes we hiked on the creek bed for a ways. It was never too difficult and we were glad we hadn’t regained the height to go back to the top of the ridge.
At last we came to the place where two creeks join to flow into the canyon. We will turn right into the canyon, and hike down the creek.
There are some piles of deadfall but the trail finds a way around.
The rest of the hike out down the creek was pretty straightforward although we had to cross the creek numerous times. There were log bridges, which challenged our balance, but were made easier with trekking poles.
I think if I did it again, I would take the creek in and out and avoid the extra height gain of going over the ridge. But it was nice to get to the top of King Creek Ridge. If you’ve never been up there, it’s worth the hike on the way in to Hood. The creek route will require more route-finding if you’ve never been there before.
This was our last scramble before we took our RV to Johnston Canyon in Banff for a week. There we hoped to take on a few fun new adventures including a couple of summits.
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