's Heart Mountain Horseshoe - Scramble
How to get there?
For the least amount of walking, parking is usually found in the ditch on the south side of the highway. Just east of the Trans Canada and Lac Des Arcs interchange, past the hill you will see a line of boulders. Park either before or after them. It is about 75km west of Calgary and 35km east of banff. If doing Heart Mountain when its raining or snowing there is a parking lot available at the interchange itself and you can follow the signage to the trailhead.
Heart Mountain Horseshoe Trip Log
Doing the horseshoe counter clockwise, the trail starts on the east side of the river. Depending on your approaching direction you might encounter a few smaller trails before you find yourself on the main wide trail.
To scramble Heart Mountain you will want to follow the trail just to the left of the yellow sign that signifies 'Heart Mountain is a scrambling route... '.
The first half of the route up to the crux is mostly a dirt and rock combination. Nearly all the rock you encounter have small trails that allow you to bypass them if you do not wish to scramble them up.
As you head up you can see more and more of the Exshaw cement plant and the busy highway below.
One advantage of Heart Mountain is that it is pretty difficult to get off route. There are many trails that crisscross and allow you to go around nearly any rock obstacle you may encounter.
The crux is a long rock band that cuts off the trail as you head up. Depending on your level of experience and comfort you may find this a little challenging. It does provide a fair bit of hand and foot holds. It is about two and a half meters high and marked with a large red diamond.
Once you enjoy the view from the top of the crux it is time to head further up. The route is pretty straight forward with a few hands on sections.
When you reach the top... you have reached the first summit. Not the true summit. Lots of folks are content with this and turn around here making for a quick scramble. This is a good spot to take a break or have a snack since it is a nice flat area. Don't forget to close any bags or the dozens of chipmunks and squirrels running around will soon find your stash of food.
If you are doing the horseshoe and not turning around. Then you will want to head to the south south east and you will see the trail below and get a good look at the rest of the trail ahead.
The rest of the route to the summit is very straight forward with a few sections narrowing a little.
If continuing then follow the trail leading off the summit and continue along. You do lose a bit of elevation which you have to hike back up to reach the last summit as you can see by the elevation profile at the bottom of this page.
The last summit before heading down has a much nicer summit view then the true summit of Heart Mountain. Once you enjoy it and take it in, it's time to start the descent.
The way down does have a few tricky sections. It starts off with this down sloping section of loose rock on rock. Using poles on the way down saves quite a bit of hassle trying to hold onto the crumby rock here.
The route down is pretty straight forward as long as you don't walk off the edge to your left or right.
Once you start getting into the tree patches the rock portions are nearly finished.
The tree line starts much higher on the east side of the horseshoe then the west so it will feel like you are going through them for quite a while. At the start of the forest you continue to lose a lot of elevation due to the steepness of the trail.
When you start hearing the sounds of a creek you are pretty close to the end. Once you reach the creek the trail starts to split up. Feel free to take whichever one suits you and you will end up somewhere along the power line that parallels the highway.
After you cross over the lines and follow one of the trails you will pop out on the highway. You still have to walk a little over a kilometer to get back to the off highway parking area.
GPS Plotted Route
This is the GPS overlay for Heart Mountain Horseshoe. Number one in the top right is where we parked in the ditch. Number two is the crux about half way up to the true summit. Number three is the True summit of Heart Mountain, and number four is the second highest peak in the horseshoe near the end of the 'U'.
In the elevation profile you can see that once you reach the first summit the elevation gain is not over, there is still a bit of loss and gain as you make your way around the horseshoe. Once at the end (if going counter-clockwise) you also have to head slighly uphill to the parking area.
If there is any change to the route you feel others should know about, shoot us an e-mail from our contact page.
