In early September I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to visit the Ya Ha Tinda Ranch area for a couple of days. It’s a little of a bit of a drive to get there, mostly on gravel roads, but it really is a beautiful area. I wasn’t doing a specific hike here, so there’s no trail that I can really describe. Instead I’ll provide a lot of photos, the area was so awe striking it doesn’t justify a description!
If you carried on walking in this direction you’d eventually get back to Banff National Park
The scenery was truly amazing, it was like a little piece of prairie in the middle of the mountains
Hiking through lots of dense dwarf birch patches at times
There were still some snow patches on the ground after the early September snowfall
It was really amazing to see this little area of prairie surrounded by mountains
Some beautiful reflections of the mountains
It was nice to experience a really quiet area of the Rockies
Finding a good place to cross this creek was an interesting experience!
The trails that we did hike on were in really good shape
One of the few trails we actually hiked on – this one would have eventually led back into Banff National Park, but a long way from the Bow Valley!
Erie scorched trees
Interesting to see the process of succession after a fire
It was really great to get to hike all over the area
Will definitely have to come back and do some more exploring here at some point
Getting there does take a while but it really is worth it. I really recommend taking a good road map with you and a GPS would have been useful too. We took the wrong turn coming back and so ended up heading towards Sundre, as the roads looked pretty similar!
© RockiesOutdoors 2014
rockiesoutdoors 
Wow! I’ll bet Jackson Hole, Wyoming looked similar to that before it was settled. Banff and Jasper NP’s are truly amazing!
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Wow, beautiful photos! Looks amazing!
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Gorgeous landscapes. Have a great new year. 🙂
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Stunning scenery and photos!
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Amazing landscape, I love the shots of the prairie with mountains in the background.
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Looks like a great place! I had not heard about this location before. Did you actually live at a ranch? Seems like this is somewhere north west of Calgary?
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It’s a ranch owned by Parks Canada for rearing horses, I helped with an elk pellet count there in September. Yes, it’s northwest of Calgary, and due west from Sundre. You can get there by taking Highway 40 north off Highway 1 at Morley, then it’s a couple of hours north from there until you cross over the Red Deer River where you turn left. Most of it’s on gravel roads so the driving was interesting!
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wow, what a beautiful place! Gorgeous pictures!
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Stunning landscape!
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Thank you! 🙂
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Reblogged this on rockiesoutdoors and commented:
Something for the weekend…one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited!
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Is is mostly forestry roads that you take into the area?
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Yes, it’s paved part of the way, but then switches to gravel about a third of the way in. We didn’t pass any logging trucks, but I think we passed some areas which had been cut. 🙂
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It looked familiar. I’ve been out shooting in Seven Mile Flats and it looked similar. I think it is north of Ya Ha Tinda.
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That’s it! We made a wrong turn coming back so ending up heading back to Banff via Sundre! 🙂
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Nice photo series. Truly an awesome place. 🙂
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Thanks for reading! 🙂
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So peaceful! Lovely photos, thank you.
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Thank you for reading! 🙂
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