Kindersley Sinclair Trail
Kindersley Sinclair Trail is a full-day hiking adventure, exploring a mix of forested valleys, open slide paths and high alpine ridges. The 16.5 km trail leads hikers on one of the most scenic day trips in the mountain parks and with an elevation gain of 1,050 meters it is also the most strenuous trail in Kootenay National Park. Well worth the trek, though.
After trying for 3 days to get 4 people together to do the loop from the park side, I was told you could come in from the back side, on crown land. To do this you travel North on Hwy 95 past Edgewater to the Kindersley Creek turn off, ( by the Luxor Horse Corrals ) travel on a rough forestry road for (16 km) if you have a high clearance vechicle you could make it to the end, where the road ends 100 meters after the last bridge. The quad trailhead starts immediately before the last bridge on the L/H side of the creek and is not marked, the first 1 to 2 km of the trail is well defined and easy to travel but as late as Sept 16 2012 there are still many avalanches covering the creek bed and no sign of any trail the rest of the way up. I followed the creek up until it was just a small stream you could step over and when it got too steep went up the R/H bank and eventually the park bounrdary, and the Sinclair / Kindersley Pass. This is the hard way of doing this trail and a lot of caution required when walking on even the edges of the avalanche debris ( over 15 M deep) or falling through to the creek below. The view at the top was well worth it. Rick
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