Captured the Heart!

There's a reason this mountain is called Heart Mountain, as you can see! Looking at this mountain range from just the right angle, you see a heart! To me, it's "heart mountain" for others reasons. The steep continuous climb, the adrenaline rush from smoking the chimney and unbelievable scenery kept my heart rate up much of the day! This is what kept me occupied on Saturday! When I finally reached a place where I felt comfortable with standing up right without feeling like I was going to fall off the mountain and then turning around, this was the view! This is a portion of the highway I have been on many times passing by Lac Des Arc on the way to Banff. I always looked up at Heart Mountain, wanting to be there one day.

I was on such a natural high after smoking that chimney, I felt like I was on top of the world and could conquer anything. There you go, just like on Friday's run, the warrior within was winning.

After three hours of climbing and scrambling, stopping for lunch on the top of Heart Mountain to relax and rejuvenate then continuing on with some ridge walking, we finally reached the highest peak.

It's called MacEwen Peak! 2185 meters! My highest yet! I wrote a note and secured it within the capsule. If you are ever up there, be sure to check it out!

We always take time to play, no matter how serious the adventure! Time to get a little weight lifting in as I do my pull-ups with a full backpack on.

On the descent was where we first encountered any amount of significant snow. There were tracks we could follow to a certain point then somehow we got caught up in scenery and coversation and ended up heading in a direction we should not have. A few of us attempted to descend but it was looking somewhat out of our league.

Our adventure designer took a lay of the land, scouted about then came back to regroup and to report we would be taking a longer route because it had a gentler slope. We still had 290 meters of elevation to go down plus daylight hours were not in our favour. We had to pick up our pace quite a bit. We reached bottom as the sun was setting and still had 2 km back to the trail head. 10 Hours and 11.7 km later, we arrived back at the parking lot. I was tired, had wobbly legs, a few scratches and bruises and quite thirsty and hungry yet still feeling on a natural high like I was "on top of the world"!