Friday 30th August 2013, day 50 – Whistler

Moose Tour part 3 – Whistler

Day 15: Whistler to Vancouver

There was an enormous thunderstorm overnight. It was so cool!

Three of us were picked up by Dustin at 8:20am for our off-peak-time zip-lining session. I've been on the little ones there are in children's playgrounds, but nothing like this, not proper adventurous zip-lining. I've never been scared of heights but I was a bit surprised that I wasn't even slightly nervous about taking a step into thin air.

It was fantastic! Ever so much fun. The session lasted two and a half hours and we went on five lines of varying height, length and steepness. There are ten lines in the whole course, zigzagging back and forth across the valley, and now and then we heard whoops of delight from some person in another group echoing around. The two guides were knowledgeable and told us a lot about the course, the company, the area, its environment and history, and there were information boards around the course too. I liked that the company makes a point to be as eco-friendly as possible: solar power, sustainably-sourced wood with natural properties that mean they don’t need to use chemicals to clean it, and other stuff I can't remember. The branches of the trees surrounding us were covered in hanging lichens, which only grow at about one millimetre per year and are very sensitive, so are a good indicator that the air is very clean.

After the zip-lining I went on the chair lift system. I refuse to call it a gondola. "Gondola lift" is the technical term, to distinguish it from the Venetian boat, but nobody says the "lift" part. So I'll be pernickety and call it a cable car. Anyway, Whistler Village is located in the valley between two mountains: Whistler and Blackcomb. There are chair lift systems on both, and the 2.76-mile-long Peak-2-Peak Gondola traverses the valley between the two peaks – making the longest continuous lift system in the world.

The first chair lift on Whistler Mountain had been hit by lightning and was out of order so I made the short walk to the other side of the village to the base of Blackcomb. It took two lifts and about half an hour to get up to the Peak2Peak terminal. Literally surrounded by cloud for pretty much the whole time, it was extremely quiet, drizzly and cold, and I couldn't see any of the scenery. There are hiking trails on both mountains and I did a fairly short and easy one around a rocky alpine landscape before getting gladly on the Peak2Peak. There are twenty-eight cabins, two of which are partially glass-floored. I was able to ride in one of these but most of what was visible underneath was cloud, or trees swathed in cloud. About midway between the peaks, though, the cabin did leave the cloud for a minute and Fitzsimmons Creek, four hundred and thirty-six metres below, was visible, which was cool.

I didn't know if the chair lift on Whistler Mountain was open yet so I stayed in the cabin and returned to base via Blackcomb Mountain, arriving in the still-cloudy but brighter and warmer Whistler Village about 2:30pm. There's a little bakery-cafe hidden at the back of a bookshop, so I went for lunch there. They'd sold out of beef stew, but I was just as contented to have hot, chunky vegetable soup with a thick slice of multigrain bread. Hmm :)

The group reassembled on the steps outside the aforementioned bookshop, by the taxi loop, to be picked up by Dustin at 4pm to return to Vancouver. The only stop we made was at Tantalus Lookout to see the view, which was quite impressive: we could even see Shannon Falls far in the distance. The clouds had cleared by the time we reached the coast so we could see a lot more than we had the day before, and we arrived back to a very warm and sunny Vancouver.

Thursday 29th August 2013, day 49 - Vancouver to Whistler

Moose Tour part 3 – Whistler

Day 14: Vancouver to Whistler

Whistler, located about two hours north of Vancouver in the southern Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains, is one of Canada's most popular ski resorts, and played a major part in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Like Banff, it's a resort town with a permanent population of about ten thousand, has a large transient population of seasonal workers, and receives over two million visitors each year.

The road between Vancouver and Whistler begins at the US border and extends north for a total length of 409km. It's known as the Sea to Sky Highway and is one of the most scenic drives in the country. Unfortunately, we could barely see a thing. Our small group of seven (five of whom were English) left Vancouver around 9:15am with Dustin, my final guide of the trip. It was too cloudy to stop at the Cypress Mountain viewpoint, so we went straight to a supermarket in West Vancouver for lunch supplies.

Despite the low cloud and rain, we did make a few scenic stops on the way. First was Shannon Falls, a cascade-type waterfall which, at 385m, is the third tallest (of any type) in Canada. It might have been impressive if we could see more of it. Our lunch stop was at Alice Lake, which was quite nice. There's a little outdoor performance area there, with seats and a stage, and we sat around the sides of the small covered 'backstage' area, out of the rain. Next was Brandywine Falls, a seventy-metre plunge-type waterfall, which was cool (all of it was visible from the viewpoint overlooking it). Apparently, hidden in the cloud on the opposite side of the valley was a mountain with a huge piece of volcanic rock on the top of it, which had been carried along by a glacier after an eruption and deposited there. I would have liked to see that too, but oh well.

Dustin dropped us off in Whistler Village (the main centre) at 2:30pm and we had an hour to wander round. It wasn't created until the 1960's, so everything is relatively new, and was designed to look like a town you'd find in the Alps. Like Banff, it's pretty and I’d like to see it in the winter, but it’s very commercial. I had thought about applying for a winter job in one of the big hotels there, but decided against that. It would certainly be an experience, spending winter in a busy ski resort, but I don't have an interest in winter sports so there wouldn't be much to do when not working, unless I wanted to spend a lot of money in the wonderful little bakery-cafes they have. Also I'd have to spend four months there, meaning I wouldn't be able to go anywhere else until April.

The hostel was a very pleasant surprise. Located eight kilometres south of Whistler Village, in part of what had been the Athletes' Village in 2010, it's practically a hotel. It had been purpose-built for the Winter Olympics and opened as a hostel in July 2010, so everything is modern, clean, bright and spacious, and has been voted one of the nicest hostels in the world. After the included dinner in the cafe on the ground floor – I had spicy chorizo pasta – I just spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the dorm before going to bed at about ten.

Tues 27th/Weds 28th August 2013, days 47/48 - Banff to Vancouver

Moose Tour part 2 – The Rockies

Day 12: Banff to Kelowna

The group we had departed Banff with on Thursday diminished further to five as the Scottish girl 'hopped off'. We were picked up by a new guide again, Kari, the only female one I'd had so far and she seemed cool. As on the previous trip between Vancouver and Banff, the bus was a big twenty-one-seater, and most of the other passengers had been with this guide on a shorter trip round the Rockies. So they knew her, they knew each other and everyone was already in little groups.

The drive to Takakkaw Falls took about an hour and a half. Located in Yoho National Park, back in British Columbia, the name is also Cree and means something like "magnificent". Around 385m tall, it is pretty impressive and, like at Bridal Veil Falls, we climbed the rocky slope on one side to get closer. We got a bit damp though, with the large amount of spray, and it was quite cold.

Like the previous week, we made a rest/coffee stop at Golden an hour later, then another at the Rogers Pass Visitor Centre. We left the Rocky Mountains after this, but we were still in the Columbia Mountains. Our lunch spot was at the Giant Cedars Boardwalk, which I liked. It reminded me of the rainforest on Vancouver Island... probably because it was rainforest. From there we had an hour drive to the town of Sicamous for ice-cream at a dairy there. I had mango-and-cream and it was delicious! I thought it would be an interesting place to help out: it was a farm which produced its own ice-cream and other products, not just dairy but pies and things as well, there was a fruit and vegetable shop, and animals. While there I had a brief conversation with one of the other girls on the bus, and found out she’s doing a PhD studying the human factor side of air crash investigation! Which I thought was incredibly cool! Of course I told her I used to watch the National Geographic programme all the time, but that's nothing compared to having a degree in it haha.

We continued another hour to Kalamalka Lake, in Vernon, where some jumped off the dock to swim in the warm water. I took the opportunity to sit quietly on the sand of the lovely beach and just have some time to myself after the near-constant company of the last week.

Our hostel in Kelowna was the same as last time, and it seems all the dorm rooms there are ridiculously cramped and have unsteady top bunks, but dinner here was included again. This time we had steak and crushed potatoes, still with vegetables and that salad with the delicious dressing.

Day 13: Kelowna to Vancouver

I'm including this day in this post because I haven't written much at all. As on the trip east, this trip back west was mostly spent sitting on the bus and by this time I just wanted to get back. We left Kelowna at 9:30am, stopped half an hour later at a grocery shop in West Kelowna for lunch supplies, then drove an hour to the British Columbia Visitor Centre at Merritt for toilet break. It was another hour to Hope, where we had our lunch next to Schkam Lake, which was really pretty.

The only interesting part of this day was our stop in Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park, a matter of minutes from Hope and popularly known as The Othello Tunnels. Basically it's a decommissioned stretch of railway that has been turned into a walking trail: there are five tunnels and a series of bridges following a fairly straight line through the deep, sheer-sided canyon of the Coquihalla River. So we got to walk through some very dark indeed old railway tunnels, which was cool. The canyon was impressive and the walk along the river from the car park to the tunnels was nice, so I enjoyed the short while we spent there :) We left at 3pm, next stop Vancouver.

Monday 26th August 2013, day 46 - Banff

Moose Tour part 2 - The Rockies

Day 11: Banff

Today was our day to do as we pleased in Banff. After waking up late enough to miss the included breakfast, I took one of the instant porridge sachets and a box of blueberries I had with me and found the kitchen, where I sat for at least an hour leisurely catching up with a couple of people on Facebook. After that I wandered into town and found the activities centre Ryan had pointed out (it took a while, there are quite a few, but we could get a discount at this one) to book to go horse riding later that afternoon.

I booked the 2pm two-hour ride (at about 1:20pm) and it was a twenty-minute walk to the stables on the edge of town, so I bought a take-away lunch from the wonderful organic bakery-cafe across the courtyard. It was very busy and I had to wait for about ten or fifteen minutes to get the fruity quinoa salad I had ordered, so had to hurry to the stables. It was really good, though, so tasty!

I didn't enjoy the horse riding as much as I'd hoped. Before we'd even set off, my horse Louie had wandered away from the others a little and I didn't know how to turn him around, so I was sat almost with my back to the rider who would be our guide for a few minutes while he gave us brief instructions on how to ride western-style. Needless to say, I felt somewhat stupid. I was at the back when we left in single file and made our way up the track, but for a few minutes until we reached the woods there was someone else from the stables riding rearguard. I really could have done with her being there five minutes later when Louie decided he wasn't going to follow the others and set about wandering off track and eating grass. When I tried and failed to stop him, he probably got a bit annoyed, sensed my inexperience and took off running. One of the four women still following the guide let him know, he came straight back and it took a minute or two to get Louie under control, by which time I was very shaken and honestly had to fight back tears. Not the best re-introduction to horses after not sitting on one for nine years. The guide roped my horse to his until we were about an hour into the ride, and for the rest of it I was able to keep Louie away from the grass and under control. Despite never having ridden western-style before, once the horse and I calmed down it was quite easy.

Apart from all that, and the fact that sitting on the saddle was incredibly uncomfortable, the scenery was lovely!

Back at the stables, I bought the photo they'd taken of me on Louie as we set off. At fifteen dollars it felt very expensive but I kind of wanted a photo of me horse riding in Canada, and (hatefully) I can't seem to pause and think "no!" when I'm put on the spot: I added a five dollar charity donation to my bill at the supermarket a few weeks ago because I didn't want to seem mean in saying no but had no idea what an acceptable amount would be. I realised as soon as I'd said "five" that one dollar would have sufficed. Gahh!

Anyway, on the walk back to the hostel I ate the oh so delicious raspberry and lemon muffin I'd bought with my lunch, and read then dozed for an hour or so when I got there. The three other girls were out hiking up Sulphur Mountain to catch the cable car ("gondola") back down, so I joined the two guys for a walk round the town.

Unlike Jasper, which began as a trading outpost in the early nineteenth century but has become touristy, Banff was created as a resort town and is one of Canada's most popular tourist destinations. It's Downtown area isn't large but is extremely commercial. It's pretty, and I'd like to see it on a winter night with snow and lights, but I couldn't live there. Once the parks and hiking trails are snowed under, there'd be nowhere to go to just get away from the bustle for a few hours.

We walked along the main street and decided to follow the Bow River, eventually coming to Bow Falls where we could also see some of the impressive Fairmont hotel, "the Castle in the Rockies", behind us. We were out for maybe an hour and met the three others in the bar at 9:30pm (along with a Belgian guy who they'd been hiking with... he was in our dorm room too and had woken us up by coming in at 3am with two friends and a headlamp). My belated dinner was a very tasty slice of pizza, and we stayed for a couple of hours, most of that time spent playing quite a fun game, before heading to bed.

Sunday 25th August 2013, day 45 - Jasper to Banff

Moose Tour part 2 - The Rockies

Day 10: Jasper to Banff

Finishing up the last of the breakfast supplies from the last few days with one of the Australian girls who would be staying in Jasper, the remaining seven of us left the hostel at 10am. We made a coffee stop in town and I wanted to get a photo of the 'sleeping chief' in the mountain ridge nearby, but couldn't. The rock that was the 'face' was a different colour to the rest of it, and there was even had a headdress with feathers, which I thought was cool.

After that we headed about an hour south on the Icefields Parkway to the Beauty Flats, a plain on the Sunwapta River. From a roadside car park we took the Beauty Creek Trail, along the top of a berm then through the trees for a short while before coming to the canyon. It was deep and narrow in some places, shallower and wider in others, with a few waterfalls and we followed the trail for maybe half an hour or forty-five minutes, then had a short rest on the rocks by one of the waterfalls before turning around. Stanley Falls is apparently at the end of that trail somewhere, though it isn't signposted and I don’t recall seeing it (at least I don't have a photograph of a big waterfall there) or Ryan mentioning it. The trail wasnt as easy as at Maligne Canyon but, though I think there were a couple of short steep parts, it wasnt difficult. Three of us reached the car park about ten minutes ahead of the others, and I sat with Jordan talking about photography.

Having driven round a nice campground looking for a free picnic table, and seen the rainclouds over in the direction we were going, we stopped for lunch in the lay-by on Big Hill. Not the thing people usually do on the side of a road but, hey, the view was pretty great.

Our next stop was Peyto Lake. For those who have seen my new 'cover photo' on Facebook, it was taken here. We didn't go down to the lake but to the lookout on Bow Summit, the highest point along the Icefields Parkway at 2088 metres above sea-level. Most people take a trail leading to a viewing platform, but Ryan took us via another less well-known trail (I don't think it was even signposted) to a spot a little further along the ridge, away from the crowds and noise. During the introductions at Lake Minnewanka, he'd told us we weren't going to be tourists, we were going to be adventurers, hence all the less-touristy spots. Indeed there were only two other people there at the same time as us, and all we could hear were the occasional squeaks of ground squirrels and the faint roar of Peyto Creek pouring into the lake far below.

I don't think I truly understood the meaning of the word stunning until the moment the trees stopped and that view opened up before us. I'm rubbish at giving descriptions, so I'm not even going to attempt one. I will say that it's probably the most incredible thing I've seen with my own eyes (that and the Milky Way in Australia) and was definitely the highlight of the Rockies.

We arrived in Banff early evening and checked into a different hostel than before, this one only a short walk from the town centre. All the dorm rooms had animal names and ours was, surprise surprise, Moose. And very nice indeed it was! There was an en-suite bathroom, a telly above the fire and two armchairs in front of that. Dinner here was included so we met Ryan in the hostel's bar and I had a tasty pulled pork curry. I think we stayed for about an hour but most of us wanted an early night so we bid farewell to one of the German girls, who would be catching a pre-dawn bus to Edmonton, and Ryan, who would have the next day off before greeting a new group of adventurers and doing the whole thing again.

Saturday 24th August 2013, day 44 - Edith Cavell to Jasper

Moose Tour part 2 - The Rockies

Day 9: Edith Cavell to Jasper

We left the hostel at about 9:30am and made the short drive up to Mount Edith Cavell, which is named after an English nurse who was executed by Germans during World War One for having helped allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium into the Netherlands. A ten-minute walk along the Path of the Glacier Trail from the car park took us to a viewing place opposite the north face of the mountain, where we could see its three glaciers and Cavell Pond, the little green iceberg-dotted tarn at its base.

About half of the Ghost Glacier, a kilometre up near the 3363m summit, broke off at about 5:30am on 10th August 2012, crashing into Cavell Pond, creating a mini-tsunami and flooding the trail, car park, road and picnic area. One of the information boards gave the amount of ice that collapsed in terms of double-decker buses. I can't remember the number, but it was a lot. The fourteen-kilometre-long Mt. Edith Cavell Road was closed for the rest of the year (though it's closed in winter anyway because of its steepness), as was the hostel for a while... the manager at the time had slept through it and woke up to an evacuation. Since then, Parks Canada has stationed a warden of sorts in the area every day - we met one when he started his five-hour shift at 10am. Amazingly, we witnessed two "mini avalanches" (though I don't think they were, technically, avalanches), when chunks of ice in one of the wings of the Angel Glacier broke off, creating a hole. The noise was incredible, and the amount that fell was nothing compared to the Ghost Glacier so I can't imagine how loud that would have been.

Annoyingly, a bear was seen shortly after we left.

From the Angel Glacier we went to the "wicked" Maligne Canyon. The river was named for its turbulent waters, then everything associated with it was given the same name later (Lake, Canyon, Valley, Mountain...) Maligne Lake is the second-largest glacier-fed lake in the world but we didn't go there, instead taking a leisurely two-hour walk along the beautiful trail through the Canyon, along the river and through the forest to the picnic area at the end where we met the guide for lunch. The canyon was really cool: the river had worn the limestone down over fifty metres in some places but the gap between the sheer walls was narrow so sometimes we couldn't see the water.

The dark rainclouds behind mountains lit by sunshine, on the other side of a 'lake' that was the flooded Athabasca River, made for some really pretty views on the way to the hot springs, and we saw rainbows, elk and mule deer. The male elk was in the river on the other side of the road, and we slowed down a little as the other traffic had, but some people were even getting out of their cars despite it being a highway. A lot of them seemed to be getting rather closer to the huge antlered animal than they should have. More people are killed by elk and moose than by bears.

Miette Hot Springs is the hottest in the Rockies. Unlike the stream near Tofino, it's basically a hot open-air swimming pool, with rectangular tiled pools, an entrance fee, changing rooms with lockers and showers, and lots of people. We'd each contributed fifty dollars to the food budget on the first day in Banff and we used what was left over, after two breakfasts, three lunches and two dinners for twelve people, to get in. There are four pools with different temperatures. The natural spring water is fifty-four degrees Celcius, cooled to forty in one pool and thirty-eight in the other. I was surprised how much of a difference two degrees makes. Then there are two icy plunge pools, one colder than the other, which we took a couple of dips in. Despite being obviously quite commercial, it was a nice way to relax for an hour after the last couple of days, and the views of the Fiddle Valley were nice.

The hostel in Jasper is located about seven kilometres out of town. There were forty-four beds in the mixed dorm there, but we were put at the back of a smaller side-dorm so it wasn't so open. We all went gratefully for showers (after two nights with no running water) though with only three female showers in the whole seventy-two-bed hostel, we had to queue. Afterwards we all took two taxis into town for dinner at a pub, where I had a cheap but really good burger with chips. We left after midnight, saying goodbye to four of the group who were "hopping off" and staying in Jasper for a couple more days.

We got a last bit of amusement before sleeping, when someone else in the side-dorm started snoring loudly. If I'd been on my own I would have ignored it, but the other girls' stifled giggling had me shaking with silent laughter, even more so when one of them prodded Jordan (one of the two guys in the group) awake. He took his earphones out and listened for a moment, then sat up with "What the f*** is that?" and burst into laughter himself.

We settled down when some kind or tired soul woke the snorer up and he stopped.

Friday 23rd August 2013, day 43 - Rampart Creek to Edith Cavell

Moose Tour part 2 - The Rockies

Day 8: Rampart Creek to Edith Cavell

After a breakfast of granola with yoghurt and fruit, plus a plate-sized American pancake that one of the cyclists made, I brushed my teeth at the river behind the sauna and we all put our bags into the bus at 9am. Unfortunately due to the full moon the clear night sky hadn't been a blanket of stars, which was a shame. Our early morning exercise was a ten-minute climb up the steep slope behind the hostel to be rewarded with far-reaching views down the valley in both directions, across the road to the river plain and the forests and mountains on the other side of that. It'd be a wonderful place to be at sunrise, if one was willing to scramble up that slope in the half-light of predawn.

We left after this and continued along the Icefields Parkway, waving to the cyclists as we passed them. As we crossed from Banff NP into Jasper National Park, Ryan pointed out Snow Dome, so called because part of the Columbia Icefield covers the dome-shaped top of it. The mountain is on the Continental Divide and is considered to be a hydrological apex of three oceans: water from it flows into the Columbia River (which drains into the Pacific Ocean), the Athabasca River (to the Arctic) and the North Saskatchewan River (to the Atlantic via Hudson Bay). We drove round the Big Bend, a huge hairpin turn created in order for the road to be able to ascend the steep climb that is now known simply as Big Hill, and stopped for photos at the viewpoint on said hill.

The Athabasca Glacier was next, one of the six principal 'toes' of the 125-square-mile Columbia Icefield and the only one that's within easy walking distance of the road. There are specially-designed snow coaches that carry people up onto the glacier itself, but we just walked the trail to the leading edge of it. There was a big blue ice cave on the other side of the creek, which was an opaque whitey-grey colour. It was difficult, at least for me, to get a sense of scale and an impression of the size, so I wasn't as awe-inspired as I'd hoped, even though the ice wasn't too far in front of us. Don't get me wrong, it was great there, I just couldn't feel my smallness in comparison to this huge force of nature. Is that a weird thing to want to experience?

Information boards around the trail provided lots of interesting things to read. There were several warning people not to walk onto the glacier, including one about a boy falling into a crevasse and dying of hypothermia in 2001 "just meters from where you're standing". The illustrated crying face creeped me out. The glacier recedes a few metres a year, so we were walking on a lunar landscape dotted with tiny alpine shrubs we had to avoid stepping on and crushing, and there were little stone markers around the trail saying "The glacier was here in [year]". I'm not confident I can identify moraines (ridges of rock, sand and gravel deposited by a glacier as it recedes) after having only a few pointed out, but if the towering walls we came closer to on our return to the car park were lateral moraines (the old sides of the glacier), then only then was I able to get a better idea of how far above my head the ice would have once been, and how thick is still is in some places.

After about an hour there we drove on and stopped ten minutes later at the roadside Tangle Falls, where we scrambled up another steep slope to the top and had lunch on the rocks. It was great, the view was wonderful... the people on the road below, however, probably weren't so pleased by our being in their photographs. Haha! We had leftover curry and rice from the night before to put in some of the wraps, which was yummy =]

We saw mountain goats on the way to Athabasca Falls, which at 23m aren't very high compared to other waterfalls in the Rockies, but the size of the river means it's one of the most powerful. It was quite mesmerising, just watching the roaring water. The river had carved out a short gorge with several large potholes. We walked through the "Time Tunnel", another short gorge that the river had long since abandoned. That was impressive, with walls rising metres above our heads and potholes big enough to have several tree trunks lying in a pool in the bottom.

Our penultimate stop for the day was at a quiet little lake for a free fish pedicure. I kept my shoes on. We stayed for about twenty minutes then continued up to Jasper for dinner supplies. The Mount Edith Cavell Wilderness Hostel is located about 23km south of the town, up a winding mountain road that's closed during the winter. It lacked the same modern comforts and conveniences that the hostel at Rampart Creek lacked, but it felt a lot more basic. The buildings at RC were much nicer: cleaner, more comfortable and cozy, and even the composting toilet huts were decent. The ones here were tiny dark leaning sheds just big enough to turn around in, and they did stink.

Before dinner, which was being cooked by the three German girls in the group, some of us made the short walk across the road to the Tonquin Valley Trail, which led to a bridge over the stream that empties Cavell Lake, and a nice view over the lake to Mount Edith Cavell itself. We continued a little further and found some paddocked horses, then returned to German-style 'baked' potatoes, Waldorf salad and steak (Bratwurst sausages were too expensive). Yum! I'll definitely be making the potatoes and Waldorf salad - their version uses cream, lemon/lime juice, sugar and mandarins with lettuce, apple and walnuts, instead of mayo. I helped clear up before going to pay, when I found out that they weren't allowed to take debit cards, only credit card or cash, so thankfully I hadn't bought anything in Jasper and had just enough cash to pay. It seems the manager at Rampart Creek had been nice to everyone and hadn't said anything, though I'd had to use my UK card because my Canadian one isn't a Visa. Our guide should have said something - he does this trip every week - or Moose should let people know on the itinerary.

I'd happily stay at the Rampart Creek hostel again, but I was glad we only stayed one night at Edith Cavell. Ah well. We had marshmallows round the campfire again before bed.

Thursday 22nd August 2013, day 42 - Banff to Rampart Creek

Moose Tour part 2 - The Rockies

Day 7: Banff to Rampart Creek

Five of us from the group of the past two days were picked up at 8am from the hostel in Banff by a new guide and were joined by six others. The rest we had spent the journey from Vancouver with were on a shorter trip and would continue staright to Jasper. We drove for about ten minutes out of town to Two Jack Lake, at one end of Lake Minnewanka ("Water of the Spirits") for introductions and even better mirror photos than at Emerald Lake. The dreadlocked hippy guide, Ryan, said we would all be preparing and eating meals together, instead of each person going off and getting a sandwich somewhere, which was nice. So we were split into Lunch Team and Dinner Team, and returned to Banff and the supermarket where each team bought supplies for the respective meals for the next two days.

Next stop Lake Louise! The most photographed lake in the Rockies. It is pretty spectacular, and other groups hike to a viewpoint overlooking it and have lunch there, but our guide wasn't a fan of really touristy spots so we stayed a few minutes for photos then hiked up the mountain for about forty-five minutes to Mirror Lake (not very mirror-like) at the base of the Big Beehive mountain. From there we continued up again for fifteen minutes to Agnes Lake, where we had lunch and a much-needed rest on the rocks next to the water. There's a teahouse there so there were still tourists but not as many as down by the shore of Louise – it's not the easiest hike up. Lunch Team had bought tortilla wraps and lots to put in them, so it was easy and tasty. We had to keep chasing the ground squirrels away though.

After an hour there we spent another hour making our way back down to Lake Louise. Most of the trail was through the trees but there were a couple of places where it opened up and we could see quite far. So after three hours and seven kilometres we left, continuing to Moraine Lake where we climbed the pile of rocks at one end for a good view overlooking it. Unlike Lake Louise, which to my surprise was a pale, milky blue colour, this was the brilliant turquoise that's usually seen in photos of mountain lakes and rivers.

The bright blueness is caused by rock flour, basically the mountain equivalent of sawdust – created by moving glaciers eroding rock. It gets transported in meltwater during spring and summer, and the particles are so fine that they stay suspended in the water instead of sinking to the bottom. Water absorbs the long wave colours of the light spectrum, and the rock flour absorbs most of the shortest light waves, and the remaining light (green and blue) is reflected back to our eyes.

Again, a few people went for a swim at Moraine Lake. Well, a dunk. They didn't swim, and only stayed in for a moment before coming out cursing. The rest of us sat on fallen tree trunks and tentatively dipped our feet in, taking them straight out again. The water temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, after all.

We made a rest/snack/supply stop in Lake Louise Village where a couple of lucky people got the last of the elk stew in a cafe there. Then we headed onto the Icefields Parkway, one of the most scenic mountain drives in the world. Our last stop before the hostel was at Bow Lake, from which we could see the Crows Foot Glacier – so named because in the early 20^th century it had three 'toes', only two of which now remain. Getting back on the bus, we drove for a few minutes before Ryan suddenly burst out with "Holy s***, there’s a wolf!"

A wolf! A lone grey wolf! Right on the roadside, trotting along. Gladly we were the only vehicle around so there wasn't lots of stopped traffic trying to get a photo. Nevertheless we only caught a glimpse: by the time the guide turned the bus around to try to see it again it had gone.

Our accommodation for the night was at Rampart Creek hostel. It's a Wilderness Hostel, meaning no TV, Wi-Fi or phone service, the electricity is solar-powered and there’s no running water. It was really nice :) There’s even a sauna, which a couple of people went in for a while before cooling off with a jump in the river it was next to. The only other people staying there were a friendly group of five Albertan teachers, on a cycling holiday before the start of the new school year. They told us wolves are rarely seen so we were very lucky. Dinner was curry, cooked by a few people in our group. They put brown rice to cook in the same pot as white rice, so it took a long time and we didn't eat until gone 9pm, but it was tasty. We had s'mores around the campfire afterwards!