North York Creek
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The North York Creek hike starts off along a gravel road, as do a lot of hikes in the Crowsnest area. The road starts in Coleman. You can follow the blue signs with the snowmobile on them that say "Staging Area". I've always stopped in the large parking area by the "York Creek" sign. You can go further, especially if you have a four wheel drive, but it's not necessarily recommended. They did recently replace the bridge across York Creek, so you can drive across that now.
It's easy walking, and a nice walk, but a trail would be much nicer than a road. Once you get close to the mountains, the road narrows into a four-wheeler track, which is nicer than a road. After a bit of climbing into the valley between Andy Good Peak and Mt. McLaren, you circle up to the left side of the valley and reach the plane crash. The pieces of the plane are covered with graffiti by now, and filled with bullet holes. Ahh, rural Alberta. It's still pretty interesting. The only two big pieces we found were the tail and a wing. After looking around a bit, we hiked up in to the Andy Good Cirque, out of which flows a nice little (or medium sized) cascade. There's a beautiful meadow and stream appearing out of the rocks in the cirque. The we climbed up the scree slope at the back of the valley. My map isn't very detailed, but I think this is Mt. Parish. We didn't get to the top, but we got high enough to see over the peak of Mt. McLaren. The scree was pretty unstable, and we were above a couple cliffs, and weren't feeling particularly safe at this point, so we went back down a ways, started climbing up a different route. We found a neat hole in the rock that was apparently a mountain goat den or whatever mountain goats have. It was getting pretty late, so we never made it to the top, but it was a really nice scramble / hike.
It's easy walking, and a nice walk, but a trail would be much nicer than a road. Once you get close to the mountains, the road narrows into a four-wheeler track, which is nicer than a road. After a bit of climbing into the valley between Andy Good Peak and Mt. McLaren, you circle up to the left side of the valley and reach the plane crash. The pieces of the plane are covered with graffiti by now, and filled with bullet holes. Ahh, rural Alberta. It's still pretty interesting. The only two big pieces we found were the tail and a wing. After looking around a bit, we hiked up in to the Andy Good Cirque, out of which flows a nice little (or medium sized) cascade. There's a beautiful meadow and stream appearing out of the rocks in the cirque. The we climbed up the scree slope at the back of the valley. My map isn't very detailed, but I think this is Mt. Parish. We didn't get to the top, but we got high enough to see over the peak of Mt. McLaren. The scree was pretty unstable, and we were above a couple cliffs, and weren't feeling particularly safe at this point, so we went back down a ways, started climbing up a different route. We found a neat hole in the rock that was apparently a mountain goat den or whatever mountain goats have. It was getting pretty late, so we never made it to the top, but it was a really nice scramble / hike.