Libby, USA and Fernie, Canada

Sat 1st, Sun 2nd, Mon 3rd Oct. With full Grey tank, and no fresh water, it was time to come down from Camp Misery on Saturday. Decided to head west to Libby as one of the guide books said it was worth going to Kootenai Falls. We did and had a pleasant walk around, but it wasn't anything great. Also with most campgrounds closed now, we couldn't find a dump station unless we paid $55 to stay at a full service campground. So we called into a service station and filled up with water and carried onto the Libby dam, where we found a nice camping spot for the night. Sunday morning we drove up the western side of Lake Koocanusa and crossed over the lake on the 1972 world's most beautiful long span bridge - the tallest at 215 ft above the river and longest in Montana. And then a drive through the town of "Eureka" before crossing back into Canada and driving to the picturesque mountain town of Fernie, where we found the park campground had closed today - it is becoming quite difficult with everything closing up - so decided to park up at a trailhead parking lot nearby. Fernie is certainly a mountain biking mecca with a lot of trails and since we hadn't done much exercise in the past 2 days we decided to both go for a bit of a run to stretch the legs, and check out some of the trails (I did a slow 5.5 kms, Doug did a fast 7.5 kms). This morning, Monday, we decided to do the Mount Proctor loop trail. The morning started a fresh 3°C, but a beautiful blue sky and sunny day with a forcast high of 22°C was predicted. The trail started from the visitor centre, and the first 3 kms was weaving our way up mountain bike trails, again we must had missed a sign because we ended up doing an extra 1.7 km, by the time we got to the bench at the end of the Mt bike trail. There was a couple of women and a very excitable 7 month old dog here having morning tea, after saying hello and giving the dog a pat we carried on up the hill, only to have the dog join us about 0.5 km up. It was quite a steep track, about 27% gradient, so poor Doug had to take the dog back down and then come up again. The whole track up to the summit of Mt Proctor was quite steep and quite a climb, and coming down the other side wasn't any better - one of our hardest hikes, and the views again was hampered by haze. I think Doug's run yesterday was catching up on him also, as its the first time I've seen him struggling on the uphill on this trip. And because it was such a warm day and hard climb about 6 kms from the end we both were out of water, which didn't help, so we were both pleased to get back to the van. Hike stats: 21.44 km, active time 6 hrs 8 mins, elevation gain 1492 m, highest altitude 2381 m. Went back up to last night's camping spot. Steps V 38378.Read more