The first hills to clear of snow are the lower Batchelor Hills.  The south-facing slopes are sometimes called the Barren Hills but recently the mountain biking community has established new single track trails with new signage and new names.   We hiked these trails on the dirt in February.   From the cycling community’s map, we followed the Lazy Boy Trail to Sidewinder then onto double tracks and back on Sidewinder for a 10 km loop.   We started hiking this route about 35 years ago and we had our own names for the double and single tracks but we are pleased that someone is caring for and signing the trails, keeping out the motorized crowd so we are fully supportive of the designations as we share the trails.

There was mud, ice, and snow on the east side of the trails, but we could walk around most of the wetter/icier areas and we were on drier dirt on the east side of the trail system.

The double track on the west side is paralleled by a mountain biking single track (Bighorn Loop), linking the upper trails with the lower ones.   The upper trails are better hiking 2-3 weeks after the lower trails since many of those slopes are not south-facing.

The southeast eroded slopes of Mount Mara were already clear of snow by mid-February.  There is a large gully between the western edge of the Batchelor Hills and Mount Mara so we found a hilltop with a view overlooking the gully for a lunch break

We hiked back through the sagebrush grassland under the slopes of Batchelor Hill to our parking area just past the end of the paved section on the Lac du Bois Road.

Our first off-snow hikes each year are on the sand on the winter beaches, but our first hikes on the dirt are in the Barren Hills, the lower south-facing slopes of the Batchelor Hills.

There are a number of articles on this route on this website.   Use the search term “Barren Hills”  to read more about the hiking route.