Canmore

We drove 150 miles from Drumheller to Canmore. It’s so nice to be back in the mountains, with near constant views of the infamous “three sisters” mountain towering above the town. Once arrived we hoped to get some hiking in since we have more hikes than time here. It was rainy and potential for some nasty storms, so we drove a scenic gravel drive in the mountains first then headed to Grassi lakes. The trail is fairly short at 2.3 miles and only gains 620 ft which was very manageable. The trail can be done as a loop amd the reward is a waterfall on the way up and two pristine small emerald lakes at the top. No swimming is allowed, but due to the fairly short trail it’s a magnet for “instagrammers.” Luckily it wasn’t too crazy while we were there between some spurts of rain and going later in the day. This area is easily one of our favorites of the trip so far already.

Ha Ling peak is a well known summit in the area, which causes a lot of people to attempt it that are not prepared at all. We luckily hit a sweet spot on timing with people who had climbed for sunrise coming down, but most other people not starting yet. We had the saddle and the summit mostly to ourselves but lots of people heading up on the way down. So many people were struggling when they weren’t even halfway up, or didn’t have water or poles. It was a really interesting people watching experiment. To summit you have several steep switchbacks, followed by climbing a few sets of steep stairs, then scramble up steep loose rocks from the saddle to the summit. Yes, it was steep the entire way. In 5.2 miles you climb 2700 ft which is pretty intense but it’s one of the safest summits in the area. The Canadian government recently finished a massive improvement project which includes the stairs which greatly improved footing and safety.

We also saw 2 different herds of elk and a herd of big horn sheep twice on our travels up and down the mountain including several babies in each group. Always love seeing the wildlife!

We cooled off afterwards with our kayak’s 2nd voyage. We headed to Spray Lakes, enjoyed our packed lunch, then inflated the kayak and set off. A relaxing hour was spent on the bright blue, clear water. It was very peaceful with only a few other people paddling along shore.

We drove through Banff national park to Kootenay national park in British Columbia. The drive through the park itself is jaw dropping gorgeous and it’s surprising more people don’t visit this amazing park. It was a little smoky, and we had probably our latest start of any hike we’ve done (11am). The hike to Floe Lake which is a 13 mile, 3300 ft elevation gain jaunt started brutally hot but not as much incline as we expected with how much elevation we needed to gain overall. We pushed the pace since we started so late and didn’t want to be away from the pups too long. Whoever made the trail perhaps got distracted on where the end point was because the rolling hills through wildflowers turned into an insanely steep never ending series of switchbacks for the last hour to get to the lake. Worse yet, if you slowed or stopped you were swarmed by biting flies within 5 seconds that chased you for 10 minutes at speed. This quickly went from one of my favorite hikes to lots of cursing. We finally arrived at Floe Lake in just under 3 hours and loved the turquoise water with the steep rock wall and Floe Peak towering over us. After enjoying a small lunch and photos we headed back, and good thing we didn’t dawdle longer. Thunder claps (and the flies) chased us down the switchbacks and once we arrived in the meadows again it started to pour. 2 hours of speed hiking in the cold (temps dropped to likely 50 ish degrees) with lightning and thunder rolling around us was maybe not how we wanted to end the hike. We tried to keep good spirited and “talked with Thor” with the frequent thunder while trying not to focus on all the dead trees surrounding us aka kindling if a lightning strike started a wildfire. This was one of our quickest paced hikes when factoring in the distance and elevation, and overall still ranks high in our enjoyable hikes. Would love to go back and camp at the lake when we have a chance, and maybe not sprint in and out.Okumaya devam et