Where to begin with a write up of table mountain…..
I guess writing it all out now while my memory is fresh and my skin is still hot from the sun is a good idea.
It took us roughly 5 hours to complete, including a 1 hour detour at the beginning, photo ops and a snack break, and of course, the time we spent on the summit picking ticks off ourselves and drinking beers.
The ticks are really awful this year. I had three on me alone. And I’ve only ever had one on me before in my 27 years.
Table mountain in Beaver Mines, AB was a lot more challenging than I thought it would be, but not so challenging that it didn’t make a great early season scramble to get into the groove of things. My calves definitely got a workout ascending the loose scree and making footsteps for my friends to follow in.
The trailhead was very easy to get to. From the town of BeaverMines you just continue down the highway to the Beaver Mines Lake Campground. There’s a big Table Mountain sign where you can park your car.
We started the hike promptly by hiking around the interpretive trail by accident and completely missing the clearly marked Table Mountain trailhead, which is off to the right hand side of the big sign and marked with a smaller sign. You follow this trail a short way and come to a wooden gate. The trail is very easy to follow the whole way up and is marked with circular, red reflectors. We picked our way up the river gully until the trail branched off by the cliff band.
We went up to the left of the cliff band which was more vertical but less scrambling than the right hand side, I feel coming up the left and back down the right was a good choice.
Once up on top of the cliff and standing on the plateau there is a clear path up to the ridge, it’s loose soft scree and hard going but the best views always follow the toughest climbs!
We had a bit of snow to go through to get up to the ridgeline but nothing too crazy and definitely less than I was expecting for a hike like this one.
Once at the top we enjoyed our ginger beers and snapped some photos before heading back down. We came down the scree, shooting for the plateau top of the cliffs. You can pretty much slide and surf your way down the scree slope any way you choose to get back to the cliff. Once at the cliff we followed the path down the opposite side of the way we came up, back down the gully and into the tree line.
All in all it was a great early season scramble with beautiful views and challenging sections. I would highly recommend this hike to anyone that wanted to give it a shot.
