Highwood Pass
Chances are, after cycling this road, you would never
guess that you just conquered the highest paved Rocky
Mountain pass in Canada. It barely reaches treeline !
But the superlative of this landscape is not so much in
its pure dimensions, but in its steep precipes, much
like a canyon that is well on its way to being eroded
further, until it becomes a collection of blocks,
monuments and walls. The road itself is as monumentally
broad as the Icefields Parkway, but only carries a
fraction of the summer traffic. A ride over Highwood
Pass is described a further in the touring stories
section, on this page
under the headings "Kananaskis Country" and
"Peter Lougheed Provincial Park". The pass is
near but east of the Continental Divide.
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01.(km00.0,1260m)
START-END EAST: jct Road22-Road541, north of
Longview
02.(km43.3,1530m) START-END EAST ALTERNATE:
Forestry Trunk Road (dirt road) joins on left
03.(km80.8,2227m) TOP: Highwood Pass
04.(km97.9,1730m) START-END WEST ALTERNATE:
turnoff to upper Kananaskis Lake and Smith-Dorien
Spray Trial on left
05.(km125,1460m) START-END WEST: turnoff to
Kanasaskis Village on left |
Approaches
From East. The road has a rolling hill character
that reaches to a few miles below the summit. But
there is nothing rolling about the peaks next to the road.
From the top a short hike dramatically improves one's
vantage point onto surrounding mountains, as shown by the
last two pictures.
From West. The dominant scenic feature on this
side of the pass may well be at its bottom and a dozen miles
further off the main road. Kananaskis Lakes Provincial Park
has moutain lakes of a size that is rarely found on this
side of the Continental Divide in Canada. The size of the
lakes is superseded only by the precipitessness of the
mountains surrounding them. The gradual climb through forest
up to the pass gives plenty of opportunity to remember this
image.
Tours
Dayrides. A dayride, exploring several options on
the biketrail along Kananaskis Lake and extending to the top
of the pass and back, measured 58 miles and 4800 feet of
climbing (which was too high due to a week battery), using
an Cateye 100A cycle computer. Another dayride, combining
dirt roads with luxuriously paved Highwood Pass started on
the Forestry Trunk Road near the Kananaskis Country boundary
and climbed the pass from the other side, then returned to
the starting point by the same route. It measured 71 miles
with 5070 feet of climbing, using the same setup.
Extended Tour. The road is great, the scenery
terrific, the traffic nonexistent. The only problem is
expensive and rare food provisions. Peter Loughheed Park has
a store selling snacks. Opinions about the nutritous value
of these products vary. But maybe it's too much to expect
food sold in stores like this to have actual nutritional
value (July 04).
Picture Locations: The last two pictures were
taken on foot, a small distance above the pass; the
first two on the southern approach
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