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Mount Goldie | 2010-05-23
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The second day of the May long weekend, I drove from Radium to Invermere. This time I went to Mount Goldie, near Panorama ski resort.
Again I used the book Hikes around Invermere by Aaron & Matt for my reference. I parked at ski resort parking lot. The hardest thing of the day was finding the trailhead. Trail starts northeast corner of the ski hill near Taynton Lodge. Behind the lodge there is ski lift (more like T-bar... actually it's witch stick... Hummm I'd like to call it "plunger bar".) and a creek goes along the hill. A road can be seen from there and that's the trail. Right after crossing the creek, there is a marked hiking trail called "Cox Creek Hike". This is not it, so don't follow the trail and stay on the road. About 200 m from the creek, take right turn (waypoint "Turn Right"). The road gradually makes U-turn, I think it's just a switchbacks, but I got confused and went off-road 500m after the waypoint "Turn Right", then soon I found the road again. Stay on the road for a while until suddenly the road becomes very steep for vehicles. Before the steep hill begins, there is a hiking trail on the left (waypoint "Turn Left", page 2). By the way around this area, my GPS totally lost satellite signals for quite a while, I think I found Area-52 which is Canadian version of Area-51. Anyway this trail leads to col between Mount Taynton and a plateau which eventually connect to Mount Goldie summit.
From the summit, I used NW ridge for descent and to make a big loop. This ridge can be access from waypoint "Peak 1" and it leads back to the top of Ski resort, in fact, you can see resort's Summit Hut from the Mount Goldie. When arrived at ski resort, check their resort map and choose your course. Remember black diamonds may be short but means hard on your knees.