Trail Blazing Chester Lake

Feeling the spirit of adventure and the impending wall of winter weather coming our way, one frosty September Saturday, my sister and I decided to do a little local exploration in the nearby Kananaskis national park. We chose a reputedly scenic, simple and not-too-strenuous hike called Chester Lake. It's about a two and a half hour drive from Calgary adjacent to farmland, foothills and then through the Rocky Mountains.

The last 30 or so minutes of the drive is on a well-maintained gravel road, which the posted speed limit signs said was 60kmh but considering we were sliding around like a drunken penguin on an ice flow, that limit may only apply to the usual crazy truck drivers used to bombing down rural roads.

Anyways, once we arrived, the trail head was pretty crowded. Seems like a popular day trek! There were nice outhouses and a couple maps in the parking lot, so we got our bearings and headed out down the path. A path. We think the right path. The trails themselves weren't really well marked besides which were for hiking and which were biking or cross country skiing paths... Oh well. Keep going straight-ish and upwards?

The hike gains roughly 300m (1000ft) and was clear and a relatively easy go. It was September in Alberta though, so our familiar friend snow was already littering the ground.

We ascended for about forty five minutes on a slightly windy path upwards where there was a break in the trees to a small meadow. After a few more beautiful fall forest scenes, we reached the larger meadow following the base of Mount Chester.

At the end of the meadow rests the beautiful little lake, nested in a glacial crater below its namesake mountain. The water was cold and clear, as is typical in mountain lakes here, and has a turquoise hue. The hue comes from the glacial silt (or rock flour as I think it's also called) created with rocks under the ice rub as it forms and melts. The silt is very light and ends up staying suspended in the water, giving the water a slightly milky, turquoise colour. Science is neat!

The mountainside was fallen rock from rock slides and had two different colours. Science explanation from rock nerds welcome here! Otherwise, I'm going to say the rocks were different colours because they come from warring rock tribes, battling for mountain slope supremacy over millennia.

The battle of brown and slightly darker brown rocks rages on.

The hike is somewhat short, only 4.6 km each way, so we decided to take the path encircling the lake. Because we wanted to hike for at least as long as we drove that day, we decided to continue stomping around in the forest and followed an unmarked divergent path heading toward Mount Chester. This lead us to a bit of a scree slope on the SE side of the mountain.

It turned out to be pretty cool as we stumbled upon some big horn sheep, a Ferruginous Hawk (I think, he was pretty far away), and an adorable hoary marmot.

Determining the trail sort of just fizzled out and went in an unmarked direction up the mountain, we headed back to Chester Lake to walk the perimeter.

Tiny world in a tree knot

There's a rugged path worn down in the rocks surrounding the lake that we clambered over, checking out the lake from all angles.

Along the way, we found a rock pile popular with people fishing and an adorable pika collecting foliage for fall.

We were about to finish our loop when we saw some ladies descending from another unmarked trail and asked them what there was to see. They said there were interesting rock formations and another lake up the trail about 45 minutes, so off we went for another detour!

They weren't kidding about the rock formation, turns out a short way up the path from the north end of the lake we found what other hikers told us is called Elephant Rock - big rocks deposited by glaciers (I think. I looked into these rocks in no way and assumed using my knowledge of glaciers from a grade five field trip to the Big Rock in Okotoks. Hooray for accuracy!).

Continuing along the pretty path, we did indeed find another small lake. Just in time to stop for lunch. Another hiker at the lake told us that it is actually the first in a series of three lakes if you continued to follow the path straight up a mountain ravine. But she didn't know how far the other lakes were and Erin was also pretty hypothermic at this point. So we let that side trail be. 

Also, the very small lake we stopped at apparently does not have a name. So I have named it Lake Tiger Shark Teeth because that's what the mountain behind it looked like. Tell your friends and park officials. 

Zipping back down the path, we spread the word to a few other travellers about the rocks and lake. With our two side treks, we'd managed to make a pretty good day out of things so we began heading back to the parking lot. We think... the trail again is not very well marked besides to differentiate between the cross country skiing, hiking, horse and biking paths. 

We may have taken a wrong turn. Or not taken a turn. Fortunately we learned from the map in the parking lot (which we successfully navigated to) that there seem to be a mishmash of crossing trails leading to and from the lake. And a giant sticker on the map just narrowly missing covering the lake and certainly stamped on over the Elephant Rocks and series of three small lakes...

All in all, I really enjoyed the relatively easy hike to Chester Lake. Although drive time was about five hours total (with a stop in Canmore for a hot chocolate on the way home), with the two side paths we took, we made it equal hiking and driving time. I'd definitely do this one again!

Plus on the way to Canmore, we took Spray Trail north instead of circling back south to connect to Highway 40 (a shorter drive, but we wanted the road less travelled... and hot chocolate). It's a gravel road with some spectacular lake and mountain views along the way. And we saw a mountain named Mount Shark!!! IT MUST BE HIKED!!!