Morice Mountain Hike

Hi Blog! After spending yesterday biking and hiking around Houston, today we wanted to get out a little further and explore what the surrounding mountains have to offer. Our problem is that most of the good stuff is located 12 miles or more up gravel roads. Great White is not fond of gravel and washboard, so we try to limit the amount of time we spend driving backcountry road. We pored over all the tourist information and found that the Morice Mountain Nordic Ski Area is open to hiking after the ski season. It is only 5 miles off the highway and most of the road is paved, except for the last two miles. There are over 16 miles of trails to hike in the area, so we could pick and choose what parts of the mountain we wanted to see. We printed out the trail map, packed a lunch and hit the trail.

The various trails in the nordic ski area have whimsical names.  We enjoyed them so much that we're putting the trail names in italics in this blog entry.

To start our adventure we took the Main Line to Silverthorne Lake.

Our efforts we rewarded with a beautiful alpine lake.

As we hiked around the lake on the aptly names Lakeside Trail, a snow-capped peak came into sight.

After the spectacular views of Lakeside, this section of trail was just Ho Hum.

As we hiked further from the ski lodge, we began to notice we were not the only folks using this trail system.  A whole herd of elk came this way, and at least one of them was really large.

We also noticed signs that a mama bear and her cub(s) frequent this area as well. After seeing these prints, which were fresh and were the size of cubs, we were extra cautious approaching blind turns. Don't want to startle a mama bear with cubs.

You would think nordic ski trails would be easy - not so. There were loads of ups and downs. We had to hurdle many fallen trees, as well.

The climb up Porky's Hill was short, but the view from the end of Should I Ridge was worth it. We could look down on Silverthorne Lake and see a tiny little island we couldn't see from the beach off the Main Line. However, to continue our journey we had to take Wish I Hadn't. While the trail down from the viewpoint was steep, we were still glad we did.

After circling around the far side of the Silverthorne Lake, we connected again to the Main Line and followed it up Trespass. Our next destination was Beaver Pelt Lake. Here we enjoyed our picnic lunch.  No elk or moose were at the lake, though.

To finish our circuit, we continued on Trespass until we reached Participation Bluff. Here we reached one of the highest points in our trek. It was a steep climb This is definitely not a bunny trail. A ski bunny that tries this black diamond slope ends up a Dead Bunny - RIP!

As we continued our hike back down the mountain, we came across an emergency first aid cache. Apparently, one of the local bears decided something in the cache smelled too good to resist. They also looked like they had a lot of fun shredding the blanket and chewing up the sleeping pad.

We found the medicine bag at least a half mile down the trail.

As is so often the case, we never saw any elk or bear while we were out in the woods. However, as soon as we got in the truck and began to drive back down toward town, a black bear crossed the road in front of us.

As we slowed down to pass, we noticed it was a mama bear with a cub.  If you look carefully, you can see the little feller's head and ears near mama bear's front paw.

We ended up hiking a total of 7 miles through some beautiful countryside. The payoff (in addition to the exercise induced endorphins, the Vitamin D from all the sunshine and the oxygen from the crisp, clean, Canadian air):  a bottle of the newest Game of Thrones Beer., "Three-Eyed Raven," described as a dark saison beer.  We weren't about to pass it up today because we forgot to drink it last night while we watched an episode of the television series.

We've never tried a "dark saison" ale before, so we were curious.  It's very tasty and has that classic Belgian-yeast taste we like so much in Ommegang and Unibroue beers.  We swirled the brew in our glasses and mulled over the taste while we reminisced about the hike and got off our tired feet.

Cheers!