Hiking Mount Opal - Kananaskis, Canada Part 1📷

I wanted to share some photos from a couple weekends ago, where I got out to hike one of my favorite mountains in my area. Mount Opal is one crazy steep climb, that is 1001m of altitude in about 3 kms of distance, so its incredibly steep consistent climbing to reach the summit.

I think you will see why I love this mountain so much, the scenery is VERY tough to beat and it opens to one incredible valley in behind the range, so lets start with some of the photos and panoramas on the approach.

So, the day was perfect weather and great skies with puffy clouds which I always prefer for photographs.

The first big ledge we've got an amazing view already of the range accross the valley. The road is down below, luckily its just out of sight from the ledge.

Up above this ledge, the flowers had started to show themselves, as we emerged from the forest and into the alpine. I loved the colors and lichen colors with these rocks.

Some more orange lichen and plants emerging from the rocks.

So, here we are looking up at our approach ridge. The route is up the left side over the false summit and then up a upper gulley to what appears to be a low saddle in the center of the picture below. The summit is the peak just right of center and then the ridge heads out to the right for several kms, which I'll get to some photos at in later parts of this series.

The valley and creek is a dangerous gulley with many cliffs and drops, not suitable for any hiking. The left ridge is our approach up towars the upper ridge traverse.

I'll post more series of this when I have a few more moments, I hope you liked this first set.
update: See Part 2 here