Little Lougheed Hike

Where:

• Little Lougheed

 

When:

• October 29, 2022

 

Who:

• Ed, Dave, Erin, Craig, Gerard, Carolyn, Kirk, Oak, Rod

 

Trailhead:

• the trailhead is on the Spray Lakes Road and is 16 km south of the Goat Creek parking lot, and 4.4 km south of the Driftwood parking lot
• the trailhead is not marked, and this trail is not in the guidebooks or on the trail maps
• look for a large washed out creek bed on the left (east) side of the road, and the trail is on the left side of the creek bed
• if you get to the Sparrowhawk parking lot, you have gone too far, so retreat 2 km back towards Canmore

 

 

Degree of difficulty:

• 725 meters of elevation gain (we only did 520 meters)
• 6.3 km round trip (we did 5 km)
• the trail is fairly moderate and well marked and maintained despite not being a well-known trail, although it was hard to see the trail with the snowpack
• after a short distance (350 meters), the trail crosses the High Rockies biking trail, and this is where you turn left
• continue until you see a tree on your right-hand side with the letters LL carved into it, and turn up into the forest
• after about a half hour, you leave the forest and reach a boulder field where the trail steepens and is straight uphill from there (we followed a trail to the right-hand side of the boulder field)
• the last 200 meters involve a steep scramble, but we were too spent from trudging through the snow to finish this part of the hike
• the hike took us just over two and a half hours

 

 

Interesting notes:

• there are beautiful views of Spray Lakes and the surrounding mountains from the first boulder field and at the summit

• Little Lougheed is the baby sister of Mount Lougheed, which is the towering peak beside it
• the Lougheed mountains were named after Sir James Lougheed, who was a prominent lawyer, politician, senator, and cabinet minister