There are no established trails in the corridor down the Trans Canada Highway, but there are various spots where we can hike up into the dry hills to create our own routes, avoiding fencelines and grazing slopes.    It takes some exploration, but over the years we have found some hills to hike, leaving nothing but temporary footprints in our wake.

On this particular day, we hiked through the grassland slopes looking for bitterroot in bloom, but we were a week early so the buds were visible, but still a week away from the full display.

A loop route through the hills took about an hour, then I drove to another area to explore on the way back, in the Battle Creek Hills.

There are a few places where reddish soils color the hillsides and this rootstalk shows the soils on the slopes.

A few wildflowers graced the slopes as I wandered through the hills.

gaillardia

blue phacelia

bitterroot

locoweed

salsify

• My rating of this hike – 3.0 out of 5.0 stars3.0