Starting from the Cougar Creek trailhead (51.08664, -115.32649), Raff and I hiked the wide trail along the creek for about a kilometre before climbing over a dam that was constructed in the wake of the historic floods of 2013.  On the far side of the dam, we settled into a long and often tedious walk up Cougar Creek which included numerous annoying crossings and a lot of the same monotonous scenery.  About four kilometres past the dam, we turned left to go up a side drainage with much of the same characteristics as Cougar Creek but drier.  We eventually reached a split where we veered right and began climbing a gully which is deceptively steeper than it appears.  The gully rises about 600 vertical metres--nearly half the elevation gain of the entire trip--in a little over a kilometre.  Raff was much more adept at scrambling up the loose rubble here than me, and he seemingly zoomed right up the gully without breaking a sweat.  To be honest, I am probably getting a little long in the tooth for this sort of scrambling by brute force, and as such, it took me a good three hours to muddle my way up the gully.  By the time I topped out at a high col, I was pretty spent and could barely keep my balance as I plodded up the remaining easy terrain to the high point of the outlier.  Raff had already been waiting patiently there for quite awhile, but despite the lateness of the day, he was not in any hurry to descend and allowed me to take a half-hour break to recharge myself.

When we finally commenced our descent, Raff and I simply backed out the way we came.  The gully had a few sections we could surf, but mostly it was just a long, knee-jarring stumble down ankle-breaking rubble--not fun!  Once we returned to the split, we could relax a little since we had put the worst part of the whole route behind us, but that did not make the remainder of the descent any shorter or less tedious.  As we descended the rest of the side drainage, it felt like it would never end.  The subsequent march out Cougar Creek was similarly long-winded, and although our growing fatigue certainly slowed us, I think we were a little more efficient with all the creek crossings on the way out.  After stumbling back to Raff's car at the trailhead in the dark, we drove to the A&W in Canmore for a late dinner before heading home.

A big dziękuję bardzo goes out to Raff for doing all the driving on this day.

	Raff approaches the new dam which is supposed to mitigate future flooding along Cougar Creek.
	On his way up the dam, Raff is enjoying the view of familiar peaks across the Bow Valley.
	Raff pauses to watch some rock climbers scale a cliff.
	Continuing up the canyon requires multiple crossings of Cougar Creek.
	A little more than five kilometres from the trailhead, Raff turns left to go up a side drainage.
	Raff takes the right-hand gully at a split about 1.7 kilometres up the side drainage.
	Raff scrambles up some water-worn slabs as the gully gets steeper and begins to narrow.
	Raff begins ascending the steepest and loosest part of the gully.  At this point, there is still another 500 metres of elevation gain remaining in the ascent.

The col at the top of the gully grants far-reaching views to the north.

 

	The remainder of the ascent is a gentle plod up a broad ridge.
	Raff and Sonny stand on the high point (2653 metres) of Mount Charles Stewart SE2.
	Raff takes a sip of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky found in the register container (courtesy of Ephraim Roberts).
	Mount Fable sticks up like a sore thumb on the southeastern horizon.
	Mount Lady MacDonald (centre) is technically just another outlier of Mount Charles Stewart.
	Raff descends loose rubble in the same gully he came up.
	Raff still faces a lengthy and tedious descent ahead of him.
	Total Distance:  22.7 kilometres Round-Trip Time:  12 hours 29 minutes Cumulative Elevation Gain:  1294 metres GPX Data