Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

October 8, 2012

1585m

Hinton, AB

This was the last day of this Remembrance Day long weekend and I decided to take my mom up an easy objective near Hinton. Mt. Solomon is a mere bump in the foothills with only 600 m elevation gain. I got this idea from simply gazing at various maps and after some basic Google searches I more-or-less knew what to expect.

Direction:
Go north on Highway 40 towards Grand Cache, after crossing Athabasca River, watch for sign towards Brule / Black Cat Ranch on your left side, and turn left. After about 11 km, watch for sign to Black Cat Ranch, turn right onto a gravel road, and follow the road to the end. The trailhead is on the right side of a gate, and is well marked.

There’s a maze of trails but all of the intersections were clearly marked. We just had to follow sign #18: summit of Solomon trail. The trail went on longer than expected. Well, it’s certainly not the 2-hour round trip that I was expecting, but overall it’s a short day no matter what. The summit was actually treed, but did offer some good views towards the front range and Brule Lake. We descended for about 20 m towards west to a better viewpoint. The weather was bad throughout the day and most peaks were covered in clouds. There were two registers which surprised me a bit. No familiar names though.

Due to the cold weather, we didn’t stay long. I also had some homework unfinished so the sooner we got back home, the better.