My First Trip Into Willmore: A Hiking Story
Willmore Wilderness Park, Rocky Mountains, Alberta, Canada

At the start of my first trip into the Willmore Wilderness Park, we met Rocky and Ann, our outfitters and guides, and their crew at the trailhead. We were at the horse staging area near Rock Lake, 20 miles west of the Hinton-Grande Cache Highway.

At the time, I was a dedicated backpacker, but a friend had persuaded me to come on one of the horse-assisted hiking trips that he organized each summer. The horses would carry the heavy gear, tents, sleeping bags, kitchen gear, tarps, etc. while we hiked with light day packs. It sounded too good to pass up.

On this first morning, as I watched the horses being packed, I had mixed feelings–the backpacker's disdain for horses and riders–nothing had ever carried my pack before. But, a new adventure was unfolding. The entire 200 mile trip would be in a wilderness that contained no bridges, no roads or buildings [besides historical trapper's cabins and the occasional forest service cabins] and few, if any, people.

When I hoisted my day pack it was a mere 20 pounds of rain gear, camera, and lunch instead of the usual 60. Maybe travelling this way wouldn't be so bad. The other 40 pounds of gear would be carried by the horses. And, the horses would carry an additional 50 pounds per person including amenities like a large storm tent in which a person could escape the elements in the event of heavy rain or a summer blizzard, which is always a possibility in the Northern Rockies. What backpacker hasn't been stuck in a small backpacking tent for days on end waiting for the rains to stop? Maybe I would be able to stand it after all.

My first few miles into the Willmore were disillusioning. I was used to hiking in big mountains on alpine and sub-alpine trails. But, we were following the heavily forested, relatively flat Wildhay River valley on an old dirt road that had been built 50 years earlier to fight a forest fire and then abandoned. While it was closed to vehicle travel, I asked myself as I reluctantly trudged along, "Why I had I elected to spend two weeks in a place like this?"

At the two mile point that we came to the first stream crossing. There are no foot bridges in Willmore Wilderness Park, which is an attraction to wilderness lovers, but some of the rivers are big. The Wildhay River can be high enough in spring runoff or after heavy rains to make it impossible to cross safely on foot and, on occasion, even to safely cross on horseback. But, today it was merely a chilly, thigh-deep wade.

The bridgeless crossing sparked an awareness that I was embarking on 14 days of travel through a hundred square kilometers of true wilderness. My initial displeasure with the old, rutted road faded and I began to relax and enjoy the steady rhythm of walking and enjoying the local flora–fireweed, paintbrush, blue bells, horse tail fern.

More good news came over the next few kilometers: the Wildhay valley broadened out and the Berland Mountain Range to the East and the Persimmon Mountain Range to the West began poke up above the softly contoured fir and aspen benches.

This wasn't the big mountain country of Jasper and Banff, but the willow bottoms and the gentle ridges and peaks on either side of Eagle's Nest Pass made for a pleasing, human scale experience, one that I've now come to prefer to the crowded Rocky Mountain trails in Jasper and Banff national parks.

We pitched our tents that first night in a camp near Eagle's Nest Pass. No other camps or people were in sight. At the campfire, Rocky and Ann told us that our next camp on Persimmon Creek was l6 km up the Wildhay valley and that we could avoid the horse trail by climbing and then walking the ridge that runs between the Wildhay and Pope Thoreau Creek Valleys. Years later, I still remember scouting by eye the best route to the top–no trails here! We had a mixed group of eight hikers, some of whom had extensive backpacking experience and others who had never been into the back country. Two were novice hikers who had done the required several weeks of serious in-city walking before the trip to get in shape.

Setting a pace that was enjoyable for everyone, we made our way to the top of the ridge, moving through old growth spruce and pine forests, and then into open slopes covered in alpine wildflowers. Finally, standing on the top, I lost all concern about having come to the wrong place. The scenery offered views of the Persimmon and Hoff Ranges with the lush green willow valleys of the Wildhay and Pope Thoreau Creeks on either side.

We walked the full day through fields of wildflowers and along rocky buttresses of an serpentine, but safe, ridge-top, spotting caribou and big horn sheep. Everywhere, we enjoyed a 360-degree panorama of mountains, basins, lakes and valleys. En route, we trails across scree ridges made not by humans, but by a millenia of sheep and goats travelling these same pathways. While we walked in the sky above the valleys, the horses carried our gear on the horse trails below. From sun up to sunset, we never saw them, nor did we set foot on the trails that they walked.

Toward the end of the day, we picked a route off the ridge to the camp in Wildhay Valley below and stopped at the bottom to swim in the South Berland–a nice place to rinse off the day's sweat. Two kilometers further, we found our camp next to a small stream, put up our tents, and settled in for a prepared dinner and what became a regular campfire briefing on the next day's possibilities.

The sunset on Persimmon Creek was stunning–northern summer days are long and the sunsent can linger for 3 hours. The hiking in the Persimmon Headwaters Basin was the best of my life in mountains anywhere–and this place was empty or riders or hikers.

That first trip wound through places whose names and beauty captured the imagination. We crossed Jack Knife Pass, moved up the West Sulfur River, and then climbed into the Hardscrabble Pass Area, more than 50 miles from our starting point.

On alternate days we moved to a new camp. When we didn't move we made day-long excursions into remote, seldom-visited basins. On one day, we wound our way up into the Persimmon Basin, traveled to the top of its surrounding ridge, moved along that ridge to the top of the South Berland Basin, and traveled down and back to camp–a 12 mile circuit without trails or footprints. En route, we saw a group of 32 goats and numerous big horn sheep.

It was 16 days later that we returned along the Rock Creek Valley to the East of the Starlight Range and made our way back through Eagle's Nest Pass and to the staging area. Our feet had toughened up, we had gotten leaner, and even the most advanced couch potato in our group had no trouble with the ridge hikes.

My thoughts about the Willmore at the end of that first trip were overwhelmingly pleasant. Willmore is a gentle, human scale wilderness. Its valleys are narrow, mountain ridges less high, forests less dense, and streams more easily crossed than those in the Rocky Mountain parks: Waterton, Jasper and Banff. A person can hike off-trail to the top of most Willmore ridges and to the tops of many peaks in complete safety with one to two hours of moderate effort. The ridges tend to be open, alpine grasslands that can be walked for miles. The numerous deep basins make for pleasant day-long excursions into places where one has a sense of no other humans ever having set foot. Daily sightings of sheep and goats and less frequent sightings of moose, woodland caribou, wolves and grizzlies makes the value of preserving extensive areas of wilderness apparent.

It is those thoughts that have brought me back to the Willmore every summer since that first trip. I hope that you are able to enjoy the Willmore, or if not the Willmore, then some other big wilderness, as I have. As John Muir wrote: "Going to the mountains is going home."

Notes on Willmore camps and hiking:

A wonderful aspect of the Willmore is its numerous, extensive basins. Each basin contains its own special features: waterfalls, lakes, small clear streams, wildflowers, and surrounding peaks. And each basin is empty of human infrastructure and people.

Most Willmore campsites are primitive. Some suffer from the impact of horses, overgrazing, tree hackings and litter–although responsible Willmore outfitters have taken control of this problem in the last ten years. Because we spent most of each day on the ridges, the physical condition of the camps was unimportant. However, we cleaned up several of the camps and I've noted years later that the early abuse of the camps has not been repeated.

The camps are located for their proximity to small streams. They offer shelter for hikers and grazing for the horses. Although we preferred cooking over an open fire, the large cook tent provided a place to dry off after a wet day which is inevitable on extended trips into any part of the Northern Rocky Mountains.

The best times for hiking in Willmore are mid-summer, late June, July, and August. In late August when the hunting season begins, the camps fill with hunters. This isn't to say that hiking is dangerous during this period. The hunter are after Big Horn Sheep and Mountain Goats and have to carefully scope the animals in order to determine whether they are legal. Thus, hunting accidents are unlikely and I'm aware of no accidents involving hikers. However, acquiring a camp during this busy period is a problem and there's lots of horse traffic especially on the trail in.

For the most part, Willmore seems empty during the mid-summer season. Weekends are sometimes buy and hikers will pass outfitters and private parties on the trail in to Eagle's Nest. But for the most parts, hikers won't encounter riders or hikers on the hikes they take even in the Eagle's Nest region. And, even if not with an outfitter, they can count in finding a campsite that is unoccupied.

At present, permits aren't required for hiking in Willmore. Wood gathering and cutting of dead standing trees is permitted. Over the years, this has produced a sparseness of dead standing trees in and near the campsites. However, backpackers don't require the extra-dry wood that comes from a dead standing tree. Over time, one suspects that the cutting and use of wood will have to become regulated. The tin wood burning stoves used by most horse outfits require very dry wood and trees are becoming increasingly difficult to find near the camps. This is likely to eventually lead to the kinds of problems one can readily observe in the heavily used areas like the Ram Wilderness where users are ringing trees in order to kill them and create more dead standing timber near the campsites.

Ray Rasmussen is not a professional guide. Each summer he organizes groups of friends and strangers, connects them with an outfitter and enjoys joining them on trips and offering hiking advice. He pays his own way on all trips. He is not paid by outfitters to advertise their services. The outfitters he recommends are only those with whom he has had personal experience. While he has used the services of numerous outfitters over the years, many are no longer in business, so Ray's list of references is short.