If I squinted a bit, I could just make out the old grain elevator at Stavely. It was hazy, the moisture in the air congealing a bit as the sun warmed the valley below me, but it was otherwise clear and I could pick out a few familiar points. The elevator was pretty indistinct and if I hadn’t known it was there, I never would have been able to make it out.
Closer, though, I could see the glint of water in the now-full Pine Coulee Reservoir as well as the cliffs and big glacial erratics at Boneyard Coulee. But it was what was going on even closer to me that really caught my eye. There were folks on horseback down in the valley below me.
And they were moving a herd of cattle. Over the years, the T-shaped line of ridges that run along the north end of the Porcupine Hills has become one of my favourite places to go. Roughly between Nanton and Chain Lakes, they form the high country that you see as you’re rolling south past High River and Cayley past the Mosquito Creek valley and follow you while you make your way down the highway to Parkland and Stavely.
The most northern ridge runs east to west from the high point with the communication tower west of Nanton and continues on all the way to the Willow Creek valley. Most of it is, thankfully, roadless but there are a couple of trails so that’s where I headed first. I could have chosen better, though.
The road I picked to go up to the ridge runs straight south across a broad valley filled with green pastures, wildflowers and tw.
