We’ll start where we left off back in Week 1: good ol’ Calgary. What a city. Our friend Hannah allowed us to spend a few nights at her apartment, a nice space in the heart of the most desirable part of Calgary for younger generations. It was an incredible view into what life could be like with realistic real estate prices, looking out from her apartment building as she pointed out all the cafes, bars, parks and friend’s buildings nearby. It got me thinking, maybe we should all just move to Calgary?
The Calgary Beer Fest
Calgary is home to a bi-annual beer fest, filled with local craft brews from across Canada. Let that sink in. This city can hold a full beer fest, twice a year, because they just love beer that much. Beer and cowboy hats.
This glorious event was being held the day after our arrival and tickets had been secured by our group weeks in advance. I mention in the About the Blog section I’m a fan of craft beer, and have yet to discuss this in any depth. People probably think I’m a faker, but let me confirm this now – I enjoyed many craft beers at the Calgary Beer Fest.
The Drinking Guidelines
During the festival, I also created a new mantra that caught onto the guys in Hannah’s friend group pretty quickly. Let me walk you through the Calgary beer fest setup, which was not different from many others:
1 ticket = 1 dollar
1 sample cup of beer = 2 to 4 tickets
Therefore, 1 sample cup of beer = 2 to 4 dollars.
Quick math, it checks out. Now lets figure out the optimization. The amount of beer does not change across sample cups. So, I could get a sample cup of a 2% grapefruit raddler, or the same sample cup filled with a high percentage IPA, for the same cost. Engineering degree was really coming into use here.
New goal: find the highest percentage IPA in the building for the lowest amount of tickets. We ended up finding a 10% triple IPA for two tickets, the absolute cheapest way to get the most amount of alcohol content. Judge away, as hindsight is 20/20 and after having a headache for the next week after the festival, I also see the flaws in the plan.
But shoutout SYC Brewing for their Purple City 10% Triple IPA, you guys deserve this mention without even sponsoring the blog!
We also ended up with some cowboy hats from one of the vendors, which proceeded to stay on our heads for basically the rest of the stay in Calgary. What a city.
The Calgary Food Tour
Being a major city in Canada, Calgary has its fair share of good eats and drinks. Some recommendations from our visit included:
Cold Garden
Open garage type brewery with huge patio, dogs allowed. Try the spiked iced tea, its refreshing on a hot day, and was the location of choice after the beer fest shenanigans.
Ol’ Beautiful
A brewery mixed food joint with surprisingly delicious burritos.
Red’s Cafe
Brunch spot with a very nice brisket benedict.
Analog Cafe
Coffee/Treat cafe with a specialty made ‘cronut,’ a combo croissant/donut. This was new to me, and one of those items that I probably did not need to try. But here we are, hooked on a baked treat that I’ve only found in Calgary.
Touring the City and Electric Scooters
During our time in Calgary, we allotted about a day to touring the city. This was done either by walking or electric scootering around the city streets.
Without doing research into any statistics regarding these electric scooters, I’m a huge fan. They are cheaper than taxis and ubers (and EVOs if you’re from familiar). Also, allowing the scooters to have access to bike lanes allows them to flow past traffic. My very uninformed and non-researched based opinion is, every city should have these for a good reduction in traffic and pollution.
On top of all of that, they are a fun time.
For any dare-devil types, these scooters have speed limiters on level ground, forcing you to go about 21 km/hr. This would be considered a safe speed to move about a city on an electric scooter with an optional helmet. But these limiters do not slow the scooters on downhills when gravity gets added to the equation. I’ll leave it at this – you can get up to some pretty good speeds on those things with the proper terrain. I just hope a speeding ticket isn’t on my way in the mail.
Overall, would highly recommend a scooter tour of Calgary, as long as your guide is as good as Hannah. Which, would be pretty hard to top. Thanks again Hannah!
Canmore and The Rockies
As our time in Calgary came to an end, the next stop on the map was a small little community called Harvie Heights, close to Canmore, Alberta.
This meant one thing. After all that time the Rockies had been calling, we finally answered that call! The drive out from Calgary was incredible. The most memorable moment was cresting a hill and getting our first glimpse of the Rockies, just these massive mountain silhouettes looming on the horizon in front of us. Talk about getting excited!
We had our hiking itinerary booked up for our time in Canmore and we were stoked to get started.
Wasootch Ridge Trail Hike
A common theme you’ll find throughout this blog is a late spring led to a tough early hiking season. For those familiar with Banff and Canmore hiking, the Triple Crown of the area includes summiting Mt. Rundle, Ha-Ling Peak, and Lady McDonald. All of these hikes were, sadly, closed due to the late spring, heavy snowpack and trail construction on the mountains.
Wasootch Ridge, on the other hand, was open and ready for hikers to take on the challenge. Located in Kananaskis Country, this ridge connects 7 peaks over a 13.4 km out and back with ~930 metres of climbing. The views of mountain peaks on all sides make this trail a bucket list item for many hikers in the province.
Strava map and link is below for those interested in location and some metrics!
See below image for just a small preview of this wonderful trail. I will note, pictures never do anything justice, ESPECIALLY from my Motorola 1. So if you have the option to get outside and do this hike along Wasootch Ridge in Alberta, I would highly recommend it.
At the time of our attempt on May 11th, 2022, the 7th and final peak required some snow gear and mountaineering skill that we do not possess (as of yet). We settled for the 6th peak, which still made it a 12.5 km day on the slopes, resulting in about a 4.5 hour hike from car to car.
These are some images from the 6th peak, which really did feel like a victory for a couple small town Ontarians.
Notes of Interest from Hiking Wasootch
- Dogs out west are unlike the dogs in Ontario. The trail dogs we met on Wasootch straight up ignored us, too focused on shepherding their owner forward over the rocky terrain. I’m not sure if it is the training or the water, but Ontario dogs could learn a thing or two.
- Like northbound Muskoka traffic in Ontario on a Friday night, Calgary is a city that has traffic westbound to the mountains on a Friday night. Sure, Muskoka is great to visit, but I think you all know which traffic I’d rather be stuck in if I had the choice.
A Warm Welcome to the Rockies
This hike signaled the start of our adventures in the Rockies. And while the issue of the late spring was ever present as we drove across the country, we began to fully comprehend how much it would affect us as we got to the higher and higher elevations in the mountains.
But, nothing could tear us down. We had made it, and we have only scratched the surface of our adventures through the Rockies. Stay tuned for more!
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