Midnight and Midday peaks

When I first moved to Calgary, I tried to find Midnight Peak. I vaguely remember running around Baldy Pass trail trying to find the trail that led to Midnight Peak.

At the time, I assumed there would be clearly marked signs. It turns out I likely ran right by the junction that lead to the peak.

On Victoria Day, I finally summited Midnight Peak and as an added bonus: Midday Peak. I was pretty tired from by big day on Saturday but I didn’t want to waste the holiday stuck in the city.

Midnight peak

The original plan was to do the Porcupine traverse to Tiara, Boundary, Midnight and Midday Peaks in a 21K loop. The weather forecast was threatening rain so in the end we chose to do something easy enough along Hwy 40.

We parked at the parking lot along Hwy 40 across from the Baldy Pass trailhead. We found the trail leading to the peak easy to follow and runnable. After leaving the pass it got a little steeper and we climbed up through the trees and through a boulder field. (On the way down, one person in our group found the trail around the boulder field.)

Out of the short tree section, we hit the scree/rocky field. Then it was more of a choose your adventure to reach the summit. There were trails leading in all directions and as long as you were heading up, you could not go wrong.

I chose not to use my poles again on the climb because as I mentioned before they do me more harm than good. I didn’t have fresh legs so climbing was definitely challenging for me that day. (Not to mention I was on the heaviest day of my period.)

At the top, we quickly decided to continue southeast to Midday Peak. I think it added another kilometre or two to our tally for the day. In the distance the peak looked really far away but I think we reached it in maybe 30 minutes.

The best part of being the slowest person that day was that I got to take cool photos of everyone in the distance. We followed a well-defined trail down Midnight then up to Midday Peak along the rocky ridge. You could also go lower if you didn’t want to be so close to the ridge.

Thankfully we didn’t get rained on as that was our worry for the day. Nobody wants to be caught on a ridge or summit in a rain storm.

After we cleared the scree field we ran down to the car. It was nice to flesh out our legs after the climbing and descending. It was a really way to cap off the weekend.

Project 23 & Me in my backyard: These two summits bring my tally to seven new peaks/summits so far in 2023.

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