REMEMBERING A GOOD HIKE ON A COLD WINTER DAY

    Again , this is a location we looked at many times as we drove down the David Thompson high way. This area is called Windy Point. So one Saturday, out we went to see if this would be a good place to take students.

    You start this climb as soon as you cross the highway ditch. Did I say it was steep? It's steep so there is some scrambling like use of hands . Again we were looking at a point or a peak that we wanted to get to. We had to take a trail at the bottom of the cliff to the back of it and then more. 

    This is the last time I tried going up a chimney. 

    We got to the top of the cliff at the back and then had to walk to the cliff face. It was a great view and a good place for some stunt photos. 

   It was not a good place to take kids. One time we took kids on this for about 45 minutes before you get to the dangerous stuff.

     About half way up I'm crossing a saddle.

    I can be seen in this photo on the bottom right.

   You can see the highway down below on the right.

Mugging it up for the camera.

     Scrambling about half way up.

Looking toward the dam.

   
 Mike posing for a dramatic shot. One step back and he was in space and free fall.

Back into My Archives Again

     This post is not seasonal or on my usual variety of topics. 

     This post will be historical and biographical. And I can hear people saying , "Oh here goes for another story again!"

     I was a middle school teacher who taught 37 years between 1958 and 1997. For  a number of years I was assigned an outdoor education class. This meant teaching about weather, clothing, foods, safety, maps... Of course, we would do a couple of field trips to put things into practice.

     Now my teaching partner and I liked to find good places for a trip. We'd driven by Windy Point Ridge for a few years and always looked up at it. So one weekend we decided to go up Windy Point Ridge and check it out.  So these photos are from our first trip up the ridge to the peak. Now here's the history. These photos are from 1992. And yes, the area is still as beautiful as ever.

    Going up the side of the bare rock ridge is steep. 75% of the time you can walk but at other times it's scrambling. (using hands)

    The ridge is made up of three peaks and a couple of buckles joining the peaks.

     To gain the highest peak we had to go around the back of it and it was an easy walk to the top. The cliff face was about 500 ft.

Crossing a buckle

Keep on moving

The top of the cliff is the orange rock in the front of the photo

Will this guy ever get to the top?

Going behind the peak to get to the top

My turn to be on the peak

Down below is Windy point and the highway. 

My partner on the edge of the cliff we could see on the way up.

Scrambling Can you see the road beside the water?

There's a small cairn at the top

Well, after all that effort we decided that this was not a very good place to take middle school kids but we had a lot of fun climbing up the ridge..