(CANYON) CREEK TRAIL (parking at the west end of Prairie Creek Trail) and returning on the gravel POWDERFACE ROAD, mid-week (no traffic).
The fall colours when we arrived late, say around the 1 p.m. mark, were THE best I’ve ever ever seen. We parked on the side of the gravel Powderface Trail (by the west end of Prairie Creek Trail), snugged on the cinches and the safety gear and off, five minutes tops. A horse these days who knows his job and thoroughly enjoys the expectation of a ride well done.
I’d heard about this Creek Trail, heard even that years back an endurance race had taken place, started I think even, from this very point, and heard too it was a sod, of pure bog.
Well, long distance international equestrian horse races, the long milers, these days are won on flat or just rolling ground, deserts often as the Dubai sponsorships particularly have come into effect. Endurance rides in Alberta are still taking place in pure bog and muskeg. The finishing times for the Californian Tevis Cup, burningly hot terrain, have decreased fantastically this past decade.
Why?? are Canadian endurance race planners (and riders) still riding in bogs and muskeg??
Don’t get it. At all. Don't get why this trail is marked for equestrian users either, for 11/12ths of any rideable time - ??
So, I’d deliberately chosen CREEK TRAIL after five weeks of ferociously warm weather, no dew even, not a drop.
From the parking place, the maps are a bit deceptive as you have to climb the hillside to the right (east) of the gravel Powderface Trail first before, peering beadily, you’ll see a mostly overgrown entrance to a trail over the small hilltop, with a red diamond well tucked back in.
At day's end I agreed I was right (!). There’s no way I’d ever ride this trail in even ‘normal’ conditions but bone dry, like this glorious day, there were, say, still five bogged creek-type crossings. Some roots. One slatted lodgepole pine crossing, decaying and just about OK for hikers but, one foot into with a horse, a log flipped up so we backed up and bushwhacked around upwards and around and back onto the trail.
Fabulous forests and then dirt sections, the sky overhead cobalt blue, the odd chickadee and a ton of squirrel middens.
Yep, ideal bear country material and I know for a fact it’s a wildlife corridor, respect it too.
We saw a squirrel, another animal I never thought to see, ever, and in such amazing circumstances of just total grace you wonder if the moment, truly, ever happened.
The trail descends again after its mild elevation gain, hardly puff worthy, and then briefly swings right-handed along a creek based valley thick with willows swathing into crimsons. The afternoon light began to slant, just as we crossed Canyon Creek. There you hook westwards (left-handed), and it’s not well marked or well used. No horse shoe tracks, no hikers’ boot treads and one pretty elderly mountain bike’s marking that had gone through a long long time ago.
You kind of follow the very pretty valley, the creek singing its songs to your left, and then there’s a meadow. Don’t, as I did, continue to follow the trail closest to the river (one slightly scrambled rock climb, not difficult but if you’re not confident in your horse, nope) but instead take the higher trail out of the triangular meadow, which’ll end up taking you, about a mile up, to join again together.
Lovely surfaces for riding, dirt, open sections, meadow and soft turf, with some random campgrounds and fire circles.
Because it was a weekday and late and low traffic volume we returned back on the gravel Powderface Trail, the first part homewards back to the trailer a bit of a swinging circular climb that had been, just lovely, graded and not its usual corduroy that has your shock absorbers trembling. After that, there’s actually a good deal of side trails to either side that you spend, in fact, little time on the road itself.
The trees rustled and twirled their pinks, their fluorescent yellows and even touches of reds this year. Back at the trailer, The Fox munching his cubes and thinking pleasurably of his haynet for the homeward journey, and by now seriously almost dusk, two young men arrived, unloading backpacks. They chose the Prairie Creek Trail going eastwards, a valley that in five minutes would be in shadow and with a temperature dropping like crazy. Interesting.
