Fall is hands down my favourite time of year, and it’s most definitely my favourite time to be in the mountains. The vibrant yellow colours that paint the mountainsides are so beautiful to look at, it’s hard not to fall in love with the larch trees that cause this stunning scenery. I was so excited when some friends invited me to do some larch hunting on Pocaterra Ridge the third week of September. I knew we would get see some pretty amazing views, but it ended up being even better than I expected.

A group of us met at the Highwood Pass parking lot that morning. With the Highwood Pass area being the highest paved road in Canada it was no surprise that there was already snow at the base of the mountains. We got our gear on and drove some of our vehicles to the Little Highwood Pass parking lot so that we could traverse the mountain south to north, and be able to drive back to the main parking lot afterwards rather than hike the 12 kilometres back over the four peaks of this ridge.

We set off down the trail from the Highwood Pass parking lot and right from the start we were surrounded by gorgeous scenery. The mix of snow and larches made for a pretty fantastic hike that day.