Ha Ling is a very distinguishable peak from the town of Canmore. As soon as we arrived in town I could tell Jay was thinking, “I want to climb that thing”.
In the morning, we fueled up with some yummy breakfast tacos and drove into town to find someone who might know a little more about the trail.
The guy at the Bike Cafe in Canmore described Ha Ling as the “Stairmaster to Hell”. What an awesome description right?
Now having done the hike, he couldn’t have been more spot on. He also mentioned that he hiked to the top with his 2 old, overweight, furry dogs in about 4.5 hours (give or take a few breaks). 4.5 hours of Stairmaster hell isn’t that bad, lol.
The drive up to the trailhead was a rather loose and dusty. On the way up, we passed a few pristine turquoise rivers and lakes along the way with some great views of Bow Valley.
The trailhead looks just as we pictured it. Rooty and steep! #letthefunbegin
The Ha Ling trail meanders through the pines for the first 3/4 of the way up featuring beautiful lookouts along the way.
This trail, for being on the difficult side, is quite busy. We ran into many other hikers along the way.
When we exited the forest there was a steep, dusty and loose scramble up to the top. I thought it was rather rugged but there were people in beat up Nikes hauling ass, so really anyone with enough stamina can make it up this trail. Here’s Jay in the shoulder area before we kept heading up to the peak (which is not visible in this photo since the peak is to the left).
Here I am on the peak with Cooper. Notice how I’m a good 5 ft from the edge? It was a straight vertical drop on the other side! Jay knows exposure isn’t my favorite thing, but the views made this hike totally worth it.
After spending some time at the peak it was now time to descend. Hiking poles would have come in handy considering our knees weren’t so happy by the end.
This hike took us about 4 hours from start to finish.
Once we got back to the truck we headed back to Canmore to meet up with Danielle and Bill. They were treating us to a FLOAT as a wedding gift. No, not a river float trip but a FLOAT experience.
Okay, let me explain. Basically, you float, naked, in a giant pod filled with 10″ of water that has about 800 lbs of Epsom salts dissolved into it. Pretty awesome. I hadn’t heard of anything like this before either… but after the Stairmaster to Hell I could use as much floating as I could get. Here’s one of the float pods.
All in all, the hour of floating was super relaxing. I didn’t fall asleep, which apparently happens for some folks and is completely safe to do so. Danielle and I, on the other hand, did a similar thing where we’d touch the edge of the pod and start counting how long it’d take to float to the other side.