In the mid 1970s, Dave King joined the Caledonia Ramblers, and the first trail that he worked on was the Ptarmigan Creek Trail. Earlier, Bob Nelson had explored the area and wanted to put a trail through the valley up towards Hammel Lakes. There had been a forest fire down the Ptarmigan, and a CAT had created a fire trail into the area to fight that fire around the early 1970s. Bob went up that route, and the Ptarmigan trail went down at the fork with the Erg Mountain trail, towards the creek where there were some logs crossing the creek to get into the Ptarmigan valley.
Someone had been exploring the Hammel Lake area, and there was a guide outfitters camp up there and a horse camp, but there was no real trail to Hammel Lake from the horse camp. Dave worked on the last trail up to the lake and played a key role in the route up. In these early years, they had regular trips into the Ptarmigan valley.
Around the year 2001, a major avalanche pushed debris into the Ptarmigan valley, which created a lake in the valley below Hammel Lake. When that lake finally burst, it swept the valley and took out bridges, washed out riverbanks, causing a lot of damage. The water had pooled 100 meters up both sides of the ptarmigan valley! All signs of the original trail had been washed away. The bridge across the Ptarmigan Creek was impassable in the 1980s, and the forest service had put a cable bridge across the creek, which was completely destroyed.
Years later, Travis Stringer had asked Dave about the Ptarmigan trail, as well as Mike Nash, who was a big champion for the trail. Dave provided Travis with the history on the trail, and Mike convinced him that it was worthwhile to get back in there. Vivian Lougheed had also said it was a great destination. Hamel Lakes were the real target back there. With their encouragement, Travis started to look for a route on Google Earth. Travis and his wife, Naz, snowshoed up the creek a couple of times trying to find a route, but following too closely to the creek meant they ended up in the creek, which was just too brushy for his liking. On their second trip in April 2022, after snowshoeing up the creek about 4 or 5 kms, they decided to climb east of the creek and hike back to the car in the trees. Naz led them up onto a bench about 100m above the creek, and they were able to follow the bench almost all the way back to the cutblock. Travis went back in June and found a game trail and route that will become the new access for the trail. The new route intersects the old Ramblers trail (first built after the club was formed) about 6 kms up the creek, 1km from where the trail crosses to the west side of Ptarmigan Creek. Travis has taken a few people on the new route. Gerald Weich and Darren Adams thought it was pretty good. His plan is to get the new route cut out in 2026.
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