Jasper National & Mount Robson Provincial Parks
Vitali and I have spent the past five months living out of Numa and camping in a tent. We've hiked and biked over 1,000 miles, driven over 22,000 miles (and counting!), visiting 33 national parks and countless national monuments, memorials, and historic sites.
None of that prepared us for what awaited in Canada -- natural splendor so great that every single national park we visited was suddenly dwarfed when compared against the expansive majesty of the Canadian Rockies; a beauty so singular and boundless that it defies description and comprehension.
We began to watch the highest mountain drama unfold -- the changing of the seasons, and we are left ourselves transformed...
We spent five days driving across America, stopping in the outskirts of Chicago, IL; Moorhead, MN; Glendive, MT; and Shelby, MT; in hopes of reaching the Canadian Rockies. There were a lot of variables at play with the requirements to enter Canada and it really was a hope -- there was no guarantee that we'd be able to cross the border.
I had a PCR covid test scheduled in Fargo, ND for both of us, our campsites booked in Canada, and the general timeline needed in order to make sure we were near the border within 12 hours of the 72-hour maximum window for a negative result, assuming we had a negative result. The covid test had no guarantee of turnaround time either except that it was generally 1-2 days, depending on how busy the lab was. Like I said, we had only a hope.
We tested at a CVS at 10AM and 26 hours later Vitali received his negative result. My negative result didn't come in until later that night which had us both worried, but when it did, it was a huge relief. It looked like we might be going to Canada after all!
Day 1 - September 16th, 2021
We left the motel at sunrise -- we were planning on driving all the way through to Jasper and had a long day ahead of us. We made it to the border crossing with only two 18-wheelers ahead of us. The very nice border patrol agent at the Coutts land crossing questioned us thoroughly and after checking all the boxes allowed us to enter Canada. He didn't make us feel like we were criminals trying to get away with something, like a certain country's border patrol agents might...
We were in!!! We had passed the final test and were actually going to visit the Canadian Rockies. Our trip was suddenly real.
As we set our first miles into Canada we were quickly reminded by the highway signs that Canadians do indeed use metric and the mileage markers were in km/h. 110 mph maximum? I pity the fool!
We could see in the far west distance the faint outline of the Rockies, just like on the plains of Colorado.
We stopped in Calgary to pick up another water bladder (somebody left mine hanging in a tree in my Dad's front yard...) and also to try to find some poutine, the fabled Canadian dish. We found a retro diner that was rated well on findmeglutenfree -- and ordered the pierogi and breakfast poutines. I'm not exactly sure what makes a dish qualify as poutine -- as this wasn't the gravy and cheese curds on fries I was expecting. I suppose it requires a potato base, some sort of sauce, and some sort of protein.
The dishes were excellent -- rich and savory and salty... but while they perhaps could be called poutine, they were not the poutine. Our quest for the magic substance would continue.
We headed west from Calgary and approached the mountains. Our first glimpse was tantalizing. We followed the road up through a valley and passed Canmore, and then Banff. The mountains loomed higher and higher until they were so jagged and immense that we could hardly believe what our eyes were seeing.
We passed through the gates to Banff National Park (purchasing the Parks Canada annual Discovery Pass -- $130 CAD that covers entrance fees to all the parks) and continued to be boggled by the scenes around us. Yes, we had been driving since 6:00AM. Yes, we still had four hours of driving to get to Jasper. But -- the mountains gave us new energy and it was all we could do to stare out the window and gasp and exclaim as we saw peak after peak and ridgelines and saddles in every shape imaginable and new geometries previously unimagined.
Spirits were high. The Canadian Rockies were everything I had hoped and so much more.
The sheer variety of shapes and colors and textures of mountains was extraordinary, and they were all clearly visible right from the highway.
We pulled off a few times to overlooks too -- I couldn't resist. I was falling in love with the landscape -- the cloudscape, the mountains, the rivers, and even the lanky evergreens that crowded the edges of the highway -- all of it was full of delight.
We continued North on the Icefields Parkway -- one of the most epic auto routes in the entire world, and we were here, driving on it! Our plan to come here had seemed so tenuous at times -- with trying to find a covid test, the timing, the border crossing. But now, we were here.
The Icefields Parkway climbs through several passes on the way north. One of them was a spectacular alpine pass complete with glaciers and snowfields, the mountains so big and so close to the road that they loomed larger than life. We saw a few cyclists and we immediately decided we should come back and bike the length of the parkway, 230km.
Finally we were getting close to Jasper. The sun was shining and it was warm. We were so worried about freezing weather but here we were with sunshine and low 60s. A fine welcome indeed.
And so we passed almost four hours of driving in a flash.
We pulled into the Whistlers Campground, checked in, and found our campsite, M28. I agonized over the campsite selection -- I had read that Parks Canada had cleared a lot of beetle kill pines from this campsite last year and so there wasn't much privacy in the sites. We'd be staying here for six nights, so selection was important.
I looked at satellite imagery and did my best to pick a site and very fortunately it was a good one with evergreen trees and low brush, although a bit of a walk to the nearest restroom.
Boy were the restrooms nice though. Whistlers had also completed a total renovation of the campground amenities and had re-opened for the first time this past summer. The new restroom building was still gleaming. Best of all -- the showers were ultra clean, designed in solid surface, and hot. There was also a fantastic amenity in the building that we had never seen before -- cell phone lockers where you could charge your phone while showering or overnight! It was extremely slow, but it worked.
We encountered our first elk, blocking the doors to the building. Good thing there were doors on both sides!
We set up our new tent for the first time (Coleman replaced ours when the zipper failed, but only had a larger size in stock, an 8 person), which was palatial, and prepared for the next day.
- - -
The geography of Jasper and Banff is shaped kind of like a length of rope with a knot on each end. The bulk of Jasper and Banff are the knots, and they are connected by the Icefields Parkway, with the park borders meeting along it. This post will cover what we did in Jasper National Park, excluding what we did along the parkway. There's just too much!
Day 2 - September 17th, 2021
We headed to the Valley of the Five Lakes trail first, which seemed like an easy introduction to the hiking in the area.
It blew us away. There were green lakes and jade lakes, and peeks of big mountain views.
We headed over to Pyramid Lake after that and up a small hill to an overlook which had spectacular views of the valley.
From the overlook we could see leaves were just starting to change and that got us excited for what was to come. I had worried about the timing to see the fall foliage but it ended up working out perfectly.
Day 3 - September 18th, 2021
Overnight, it rained hard. We were bailing water out of our tent, which had the same issue as our last one -- the waterproof fabric was not waterproof. Fortunately, we knew about the rain ahead of time and had picked up all our belongings and put them on our camp chairs, which fit inside our new tent easily. So it was wet in the tent but we were dry.
It wasn't raining at the campsite in the morning so we drove over to the Edith Cavell Trailhead and hoped that it would be dry there too.
Right as we pulled in it started to drizzle... and the drizzle turned to light rain as we walked up the trail to the tarn below Mount Edith Cavell, named after the British nurse who saved hundreds of soldiers during WWI, from both sides. It was a punchy jade green.
We planned on continuing up to Edith Cavell Meadows but found the rain turning to snow, and the trail quickly became steep, slick, and slushy. Our boots were not faring very well in this snowy mixture so we decided to turn back.
We were a little disappointed our second hiking attempt was so quickly thwarted, but Mother Nature left us a little crumb for consolation.
We drove back into Jasper and stopped by Lake Edith, Annette, and Beauvert, as well as stopping at the visitor center. There was a resort across of Lake Beauvert where Queen Elizabeth and King George VI, as well as Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip had stayed. There were a bunch of scuba divers getting ready to go into the lake, which we were surprised to see.
I'm pretty sure Vitali was getting annoyed at how often I was asking him to pull over so I could take pictures. He was practically frothing at the mouth. It drizzled off and on the rest of the day but the forecast showed the rain stopping overnight so we were optimistic about the next day's hiking prospects.
Day 4 - September 19th, 2021
It finally stopped raining overnight. Our outlook was suddenly much sunnier, despite the near freezing temperatures.
We headed over to the Sulphur Skyline trail which started at the Miette Hot Springs, which were unfortunately closed.
The drive over to the hot springs was, quite unsurprisingly, very scenic. We passed some elks duking it out too.
We arrived at the parking lot which was full of aspens almost at peak -- and headed up the trail.
The hike started off innocently enough -- fully paved and quite mild and then things quickly escalated. It was steep but we scorched the trail. The first two miles we did something like 19 minute and 21 minute miles, on probably a 14-17% average grade. Then we got near the knob up top where the grade was closer to 20% and died.
Once we were above treeline it got super windy and much colder.
We were not prepared and only spent a little bit of time at the top before coming back down.
The views were spectacular though. I put my long lens on and it was so windy I could barely hold the barrel of the lens steady.
On the road back to Jasper from the hot springs we got our first panorama of changing leaves!
Numa also celebrated a pretty big milestone, 110,000 miles!
I got to take pictures out the other side of the car on the way back and didn't waste the opportunity. We were doing quite a bit of drive by shooting.
We headed over to Malign Canyon. We made lunch at the picnic area and then hit the trail. It was pretty busy -- there was a very large parking lot, a fancy restaurant, and all the infrastructure you'd associate with a tourist hot spot.
Wow. We spent a few hours here as I could only take a few steps before putting the tripod down to take another photo. I was also fighting the omnipresent fence which was the same height as my tripod.
It was a dramatic meandering canyon carved through limestone, the deepest canyon in the park at up to 50m deep.
It was getting late at this point so we headed back to camp. We saw a bear on the way, out on important bear business. Back at Whistlers all of our neighbors had left except for a single RV.
Day 5 - September 20th, 2021
Remember those new boots? They were rubbing both of us the wrong way. Vitali's gave him a nice big blister on his heel and mine were rubbing my achilles tendon (my good one) in a way that was making every step painful. We winced through this hike, which was described in the trail guide as one of "Jasper's steepest".
It was at Malign Lake, which we gathered was a popular tourist spot. We passed Medicine Lake on the way in, which was low but had stunning views.
The Opal Hills loop was extraordinarily steep the first half. Luckily the trail surface was mostly soft dirt and few rocks or roots. Once we made it up it was rolling hills until we came around back of some knobs and gradually up through a valley where it was lightly snowing. It was silent, and extremely peaceful. We got some real nice fall colors back here.
We passed a few grouse who seemed to think if they sat perfectly still we couldn't see them. We also saw this and were so thankful to see no bear fur on the barbs.
Some of the trail reviews had said there were no views on this trail and to skip it; others said the views were spectacular, so we weren't sure what to expect. We came to a cairn and saw a trail that forked off and headed up a hill. We took it, and found ourselves laboring again up a very steep hill. Eventually we came to the overlook, which took our breath away.
Malign Lake and the valley it sat in stretched as far as the eye could see, surrounded by snowy peaks. We wished the sun was out as it was windy and cold but the clouds added so much drama to the scene I could hardly complain. The massive mountain at the left is the Queen Elizabeth Range.
Across the lake were unnamed ridges that danced in the sunlight. I could have spent hours up there (if I had hand warmers!).
We hiked down and did the short Mary Schaffer loop which came to an overlook where the lake was first seen by Mary Schaffer, who had spent six months in the backcountry trying to find it.
We had a few moments of sun to illuminate the color of the water but the clouds quickly closed in.
We headed back to camp and now that I was on the other side of the road I made Vitali pull over quite a bit more.
How could I resist? It was taking us so long to get places and go anywhere because I was stopping every five minutes. I took 1,100 pictures in 5 days.
Back at camp... we went to shower and on the way back discovered a bull elk standing around our campsite. We walked around the loop the other way but that way was blocked too. So we sat down at another campsite and waited. Eventually the elk moved far enough away that we felt confident enough to calmly walk to Numa and jump inside. Once we were safe the elk came back around and lazily ate the grass around our campsite before laying down behind our tent. We were hostage inside Numa for a time.
While our three pointed dude was eating grass (he didn't seem very interested in anything else, probably because there were big guns nearby and he had no hope of securing a harem of his own), the big guns were duking it out. We had two tiny asian neighbors who got so close to them fighting I was genuinely concerned. We were safe in Numa with my telephoto.
Apparently Whistlers is famous for elk sightings.
Then the elk wrangler showed up -- carrying his hockey stick with red ribbons and wielding a paintgun with one hand. It was impressive -- he waved the stick around and the elk ran away.
We noticed that some people were coming into the campground as it got closer to the weekend, but they were sleeping in their cars, and leaving after just one night. That night, every campsite we passed on the way to the restroom had a vehicle being slept in. Sedans too!
Day 6 - September 21st, 2021
In my original plan for our trip (for the previous year), I had planned to visit Wells Grey and Mount Robson Provincial Parks. Wells Grey got cut out in v2 but I had forgotten about Mount Robson completely. I was looking at the map and saw Mount Robson and did a little research -- was it worth visiting?
The resounding answer was yes. Mount Robson is the most prominent peak in the North American Rockies, and the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. It rises nearly 10,000' from the valley below.
So we drove over to the park, passing the Continental Divide, into British Columbia, and to the next timezone.
Our first glimpse of this magnificent mountain was quite dramatic. You are driving along and all of a sudden you turn the corner and there it is, existing; defying gravity; begging for anyone to come up and challenge it. Big Mountain Energy. The peaks were maybe 50% clear when we first saw it, but I was so eager to get hiking that we didn't stop to take a picture. When we came back after the hike the peaks were more obscured and I was kicking myself.
We would hike up to Kinney Lake at its base on the Berg Lake Trail.
We followed the stream up to the lake. Vitali is very kind and carries my tripod most of the time. This time he devised the tripod deployment tax. I'll ask him to deploy or fold up the tripod when I feel like we'll be hiking for a bit without needing it -- but sometimes I'm wrong, and he'll open it up for me right after having closed it. When he does that, he exacts his new tax, payable directly in beer.
The first thing we noticed was how much wetter the environment was on this side of the Divide. It makes sense, being on the windward side, but also Mount Robson is so tall that it catches the weather and the biome in its shadow is extra lush and moist.
We arrived to the lake with a burst of bright sunshine, which beautifully illuminated the water, opaque with glacial flour. We walked around the lake a bit and departed when the sun left.
There were some campsites up here right on the water which looked amazing. You can continue further up the trail to Berg Lake, which would be an excellent backpacking trip. I would love to come back and do it.
On the trail back down we caught a little bit of sunlight which beautifully illuminated the forest floor, which was mostly a carpet of moss.
We headed back towards Jasper but stopped by Overlander Falls after seeing the sign advertising only a 45 minute sojourn! It was a short and steep walk down to the river and falls. These are so named after a group of prospectors who travelled across the prairies and mountains in the hope of staking a claim. The group split near here and half the group went up the river and found these falls, while the other half abandoned their goal and rafted back west.
I asked Vitali to drive us back over to the road to Malign and Medicine Lakes -- there were a lot of photographs I wanted to get after missing them the first time.
The sun cooperated and lit the mountain face just so... while a little deer meandered along the trail.
We had noticed even when the rest of the area was seemingly overcast, Pyramid Mountain almost always had sunlight on its southern face. Similarly, Mount Edith Cavell was almost always shrouded in clouds and weather. We saw the peak only once in the week we were there.
Our Canadian trip continues in the next post... where we:
- Stay in grandma's basement!
- Shiver in the pre-dawn cold to photograph sunrise over Moraine Lake!
- See western larches for the first time!
- Hike the worst hike ever!
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