Roughing it in the Bush

My last post was from a book I read right before going on a camping trip and, seeing that I have very little experience camping myself, it tickled my funny bone.

Fortunately my experience camping 5 nights in Jasper National Park was much, much better than Elfrieda’s in All My Puny Sorrows. This massive park in Alberta offers breathtaking views of the Canadian Rockies, along with countless glacier-fed rivers and lakes. Every bend in the road offers yet another magnificent photo op, making even a mediocre photographer’s work look golden.

One of my favourite lakes – Medicine Lake

Our group camped in Wabasso campground which had proper washrooms but no showers, so I had to shower in rivers and lakes for the first time. Seeing that they’re glacier-fed, these were the coldest showers I’d ever had but luckily we had great weather so the dip wasn’t as shocking as it could have been.

Maligne Lake is popular for canoe and kayak rentals. I swam instead.

View from my spot in Maligne Lake

My biggest fear was encountering bears. I soon had to get over that because literally less than five minutes into arriving in the park, we see a bear on the side of the road and then when we get to our campsite, the person signing us in says, “Just to warn you, there are a lot of bears here.” I almost had a panic attack but thank God the only ones we saw were from the side of the road, and they didn’t visit me in nightmares either (which did happen the other time I went camping).

Anyone know what kind of bear this is?

The gigantic river that runs through a large part of the park is the Athabasca River. Our campsite backed onto it and it became the evening lullaby that replaced the sirens and traffic I am used to in Vancouver.

morning mist on the Athabasca

Given the Artist likes to fly fish, we found a few rivers for him to cast a line while I sat on the side and read. (He didn’t catch much, but any day where he’s in a river is a good day for him).

Maligne River between Medicine Lake and Maligne Lake

Fiddle River near the entrance/exit of the park on the Alberta side

We did a lot of driving in our little Toyota Yaris that clocked the longest trip of its life. In particular, we wanted to drive the Icefields Parkway that leads to the stunning Athabasca Glacier and Columbia Icefields and continues on to Banff National Park. The route is renowned for being one of the most scenic drives in the world. I’d have to agree.

The Endless Chain ridge

One of the glaciers on the approach to Athabasca Glacier

Stunning waterfalls are also part of the route:

The mist coming off the powerful Athabasca Falls creates this low-hanging rainbow

Sunwapta Falls

The Athabasca Glacier used to extend much closer to the highway but has receded dramatically over the past 125 years. This is the “toe of the glacier”, the furthest point you can walk to if you’re not on a guided tour that actually takes you on the ice.

Athabasca Glacier

We also climbed a bit of Mount Edith Cavell, a very recognizable peak with its stripes of snow, named after an English nurse who was executed by the Germans during WWI.

A view of Angel Glacier and its pond at Edith Cavell

Looking back along the Edith Cavell hike

Some other wildlife we saw:

By the end of our stay, I was saturated with campfire smell that took at least three real showers to remove, but I felt rather proud of myself for roughing it in the bush for multiple days and for enjoying it, too! I may have been deprived of camping as a child but who’s to say I can’t learn to like it as an adult?

Snow on Seymour

Unlike this weekend, last weekend was crisp and clear and beautiful. The Artist and I went to Mount Seymour to get our first glimpse of the fluffy white stuff.

It was my first winter hike and I’m glad I had on a pair of good hiking boots for it!

These little grey jays, or whiskey jacks as they are often called, were a common sight along the trail. Not shy at all. (Nevertheless, I was still pretty thrilled one landed on my hand).

We climbed about halfway to the first peak so we could get this view of Vancouver rising through the fog.

The sun was out and it felt great to be enjoying the outdoors on the last weekend of November.

On the way down, we stumbled upon these folks with their makeshift toboggan run. The Artist gave it a go while I carried our backpacks down.

A few slips and tumbles later, we made it back to the car and warmed up with hot drinks and an oh-my-gosh-I-cannot-believe-how-good-this-book-is book at Andrews on Eighth that I will blog about next week, so stay tuned!

 

A Half-Hearted Pilgrim

“When Cheryl Strayed reaches Ashland, Oregon, she meets a woman who admires her for traveling ‘the pilgrim way.’ That’s when it dawned on me that Wild is a modern-day pilgrim story, but with a twist.”

To know more about this crazy twist (I exaggerate slightly), I’m going to send you to The Curator to read my full response to Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild.

The Mountain and the Valley: Pemberton Weekend

No, this isn’t a post about the Canadian novel of the same name by Ernest Buckler, one of my all-time favourites.

I borrowed the title to show pics of a weekend spent in Pemberton this month, hiking the rainy heights of Joffre Lakes and biking the flat streets of Pemberton Valley for their annual Slow Food Cycle.

Joffre Lakes

This hike rewards you with 3 beautiful lakes along the way—Lower, Middle, and Upper lakes, fed by glacier runoff. You see the Lower one right away, which is always nice to have a view for motivation early in the hike.

Lower Joffre Lake

Walking into the mystic vale

As you can tell from these pictures, we chose one of the rainiest days this summer to do the hike. But the mist added its own beauty to it. I was thankful the fog started clearing by the time we arrived at the Middle Lake so we could get this mysterious view.

The Middle Joffre Lake ghosting into view

The longest stretch of the hike is from the Middle Lake to the Upper one, but even then, I was surprised at how quick it was. The hike took us about 3.5 hours in total. Much easier of a climb than Garibaldi. We didn’t stay too long at the top because we were cold and wet, but we could see the outline of the glacier behind, and it made me eager to return here on a brighter day to see it in all its alpine glory.

Upper Joffre Lake with glacier

Slow Food Cycle

I was thankful the hike wasn’t more strenuous because the next day, we did a 20K bike ride along Pemberton Meadows Road, stopping at various farms to enjoy local food as part of Pemberton’s 11th annual Slow Food Cycle.

Stopping for lunch at one of the farms

Here’s a video that explains more about it:

What a fun way to spend a Sunday, biking in the lap of majestic mountains and enjoying produce fresh off a farm. Such a different experience than I’ve ever had biking in the city! I think I’ll be back to do this again one summer.

The Gorgeous & Gargantuan Garibaldi

“You pick the hottest days to go hiking,” my mother texts me when I tell her what I did on Saturday.

Yup. Saturday was a hot one for doing Garibaldi Lake. But the 3 hours of mostly switchbacks up the mountain were in the shade, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We took the scenic detour through Taylor Meadows, making it a 5.5 hour round trip.

The trail is nicely groomed.

At long last, we reach Taylor Meadows. According to the Vancouver Trails website, “going left and adding a few kilometers onto the hike takes you up through Taylor Meadows, a magnificent area filled with colours from alpine flowers that cover the sides of the trail during the late summer and early fall.”

We didn’t see any flowers. Granted, it’s not quite late summer. It was still beautiful being up at tree level and seeing the towering peak of Black Tusk, but when you’re expecting wildflowers à la Sound of Music, it was a little bit of a letdown.

Black Tusk is the dark peak to the right.

It’s a few kilometres from here to the lake, where all that work finally feels worth it when you glimpse this:

And this:

View from the middle of a wooden footbridge that gets you over to the lake.

The view from the other side of the bridge.

Walking around the lake to find a perfect (and less crowded) spot for lunch.

to the island, it is!

The group I was with spent 2 hours at the top, eating lunch, taking a dip into the turquoise glacier lake (some even swam out to the island of inukshuks you see in the distance), and enjoying the spectacular views. It’s a shame to climb all that way and come back so quickly. That’s why next time, I would even want to spend a night camping, although the work in bringing all that gear up on your back would be that much more difficult.

Using a water filter for the first time. What a great invention!

This was probably my big hike of the summer. In comparison to The Chief, I enjoyed it more. Yes, the way up felt like it would never end sometimes, but I liked that the trail was so well groomed and there weren’t any stairs or gigantic roots to trip over.

Plus, there was this bonus viewpoint on the way back:

Goodbye, Garibaldi! What a beautiful part of the world we live in!

Diez Vistas

My first hike of the summer was a good one but a long one. The Artist and I tackled #7 on this list: Diez Vistas. 10 views in 1 hike, sign me up!

The trail loops around Buntzen Lake in Port Moody. I was looking forward to a trail where you didn’t repeat your steps on the way down. However, I think this also contributed to making us feel like it went on forever as we had no reference point to how close the finish was. After 6 hours (including a 30 minute break at the 1st view for lunch) and many aching calves and wobbly knees later, we made it back to the south beach of Buntzen Lake.

The trail first takes you over this marshy area of the man-made lake via a floating bridge.

Once on the other side, you take the Diez Vista trail that quickly ascends with a series of switchbacks. This is the hardest part of the trail.

However, it isn’t too long before you are rewarded with this incredible view of Indian Arm and Deep Cove, with the distant cities of Burnaby to the left and Vancouver to the right.

We stopped here for lunch before making our way to the 2nd and 3rd views, which are even better! #3 especially. A bonus was that this trail was virtually empty on a sunny Friday afternoon, so we had the views to ourselves!

Here’s a close up of Deep Cove in North Van.

And one of Belcarra Regional Park (that’s Hamber Island above the mass dense of trees, middle right of pic).

Unfortunately, the best 3 views are within the first quarter of the hike. It would be nice if they were a little more spread out. The majority of the hike was walking through forest, which was great because it was so hot out but we were in shade most of the day.

There were some partial views along the way, but a lot of it has become overgrown.

As some reviewers mention in the comments section of Vancouver Trails, you do have to watch for the orange tree markers to make sure you stay on trail. There were a few points where we wish the markers were a little more frequent, especially near the end.

Here you can see three peaks of Mount Seymour.

The downhill seemed to take forever. And then when we came back out near Buntzen Lake, we took the long (albeit scenic) route back to South Beach around the quieter North Beach, which added 30 minutes or so on to the hike.

The sound of barking dogs and squealing children at South Beach never sounded so good to our ears!

Jumping in the lake to cool down afterwards was a great way to finish the day.

If you’re planning on doing this hike, I’d say bring lots of water, especially if it’s hot! We had 2 bottles each and ran out with 1 hour left to go. And make sure to bring your bathing suit so you can reward yourself with a dip after a hard day’s work! The water’s cool but it feels great.