's Prairie Mountain Hike
Prairie Mountain is one of those peaks that do not require an abundance of effort to hike, but still gives you a great rewarding experience. With minimal environmental dangers and no technical skill required. You get boosted over 700 meters from the parking area to see the great peaks that surround you. By being one of the Front Range peaks it gives you a unique opportunity to look east and see nothing but rolling hills and prairie; but turn around and that panoramic view changes to nothing but sheer mountain sides and majestic peaks.
Due to its easy nature it is commonly summited year round; from t-shirts in the summer to snowshoeing escapades in the winter.
How to get to Prairie Mountain?
The trail starts at the Elbow Falls parking area. Some people parked on the shoulder but since you never know when someone is looking at that deer on the side of the road and plows into your car, so we opted to walk the extra 100m and parked in the parking lot. From Bragg Creek it is about 21 kilometers to the signed Elbow Falls parking area just before the winter gate.
Prairie Mountain Hike Trip Log
The hike up Prairie Mountain starts off across the street from Elbow Falls. We came across groups of people that parked on the road but we decided to park in the parking lot across the road, Elbow Falls. This allowed us to not have to park on the road itself and run the risk of someone driving into the car as they were staring at the deer on the side of the road. There is no desginated trail head, but on the north side of the road, and east of the gates you will see trails starting in the woods. All these hiking trails go up hill and eventually merge together into one.
After weaving through the numerous trails you will funnel onto the one main hiking trail that leads up Prairie Mountain. The forest does not offer too many views at this point.
The trail widens and disapears into the trees, but does allow you to walk side by side to share your exciting stories.
Eventually the trail opens up as you reach one of the humps. You can see what a waits before you as you can roughly trace the trail through the trees.
After the trail descends from the hump you get to a point where it goes up ... It felt like it was the steepest part of the hike as the trail was gaining a nice steady elevation, then out of nowhere comes the hill.
As you make your way up to the summit you follow relatively close to the exposure on your right side. Depending on your comfort level, the exposure should not give you any problems as there is LOTS of room on the way up so you can give more than enough space to the cliffs.
GPS Plotted Route
Once you get through the maze of beaten in trails at the start, the trail progression is rather logical as you make your to the summit.
The route up to the summit of Prairie Mountain is rather steady. You can see by the graph that the two steepest portions are the start and the point in the forest when the trail suddenly steepens. That visual is visible on the fifth image down in our trip report.
If there is any change to the route you feel others should know about, shoot us an e-mail from our contact page.
