Mist Mountain - Dreams Come True

While fairy tales are nice but too good to be true, Mist Mountain is another short story about dreams comes true. I have always enjoyed soaking in hot springs but they were usually expensive or time consuming to get access to. Since I have been living in the Rockies, I have always believed that there is some natural hot springs that are as hidden as possible. There must be some hot springs on top of the mountain and I want to go for a dip in it. Being a travel enthusiast, I always wanted to discover them.

After doing a few research works, I came across Mist Mountain. There are rumors about the mountain that it has a hot spring on top. That gave me and my friend Jeremy the idea that we needed to hike this mountain to see the hot springs for ourselves. Since it was winter during that time, we had to wait until summer for the road to Mist Mountain to open up.

Summer arrived; we scheduled a hike to Mist Mountain. In the morning, we went to Tim Horton’s to grab our lazy breakfast and our motivational Canadian Maple doughnut which we plan to eat when we get to the top of the mountain. We then headed to Kananaskis where the mountain is situated. The trip from Canmore to the trailhead is more or less an hour. We thought that it’s quite challenging to find the trailhead from the road. IF you are hiking there, try to pay attention to the map and also the cell reception in the area is not reliable.

A very few people were doing the hike and it was peaceful. The forest area can get boring. The trail in the beginning is quite narrow so the tall grass and plants can get you scratched. As soon as you exit the forest area, the scenery will offer a beautiful surprise. The trail continues through a peaceful meadow going uphill between bigger hills. I guess I love meadows so much. I could not even justify in words how the scenery exactly looks like. In fact, I can’t put it in words that I am painting it in a canvass in an attempt to express its beauty.

Soon as we reached the top of the hill, the trail continued to go around the bigger hills and that’s where it gets to the rocky area of the mountain. From there, it forked between a trail going to the hot springs and the trail going to the summit. We decided to go the hot springs first. From pictures from the internet, we cannot believe that it was real. The hot springs has few cascading pools but the main pool can fit in up to two people. This is more than how I pictured it: dipping in a hot spring on top of the mountain with bonus scenery and a cute marmot watching us. Dreams come true!

It was a very deep moment of mindfulness being in the hot spring on top of the mountain. I am sure many people who are wealthy and millionaires don’t experience this much. I mean I could be a millionaire but if I was not healthy enough to hike up, and then there is no point. I can be in helicopter but the satisfaction of working hard to get to top is priceless. I can be on top of a man made hot spring on the highest building or even on top of the mountain, but the whole experience cannot be bought by money. There are so many things to be grateful for in this life and not be taken for granted.

We stayed for a few hours and we still have ways to go to reach the summit. It was getting late and the sun will be setting soon. My buddy and I were the last people left in the mountain hiking to the peak and we are still dedicated to make it to the top. The elevation gets higher and it was getting harder to breathe. We slow down and take lots of break. We are so motivated to eat the Canadian Maple donut on top of the mountain so we never gave up. After a lot of hard work, we started to see the peak of the mountain and seeing it reenergized us. We made it on top and it was one of the most marvelous views in my hiking experience. This has not happened to me before but my knees were shaking of fear of the height.

We had our Canadian Maple donut and it was the best donut ever!

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Tim Horton’s but I wish they would sponsor us.