Category: hiking

Wandering alpine meadows

Sunday was an average sort of day, with rain lurking in the clouds, so we decided to just do some meadow wandering.

On the whole the Moosling didn’t really feel like walking, so we did a lot of carrying.

But we had the entire place to ourselves, which was nice.

And the rain even held off until we got back to the car.

On the drive back home, we were treated to the magnificent sight of an enormous herd (27) of mountain goats! I’d not seen a solitary one before, so to see so many of them was a little spectacular. They very soon flowed off and up the hill and away, and after spending a little time just staring at them, I recovered enough to at least try and take a photo…

canada general hiking trail running

Running the Iceline

The cunning plan for the day was to go and run the Iceline Trail in Yoho National Park. The added difficulty was having to take it in turns, so we didn’t have to tie the Moosling to a tree with nothing more than a bottle of water, a toasted cheese sandwich, and a can of bear spray to defend himself.

Alex got to run first, heading off at 8.40am from the Takkakaw Falls carpark. He headed straight up onto the Iceline from there. Meanwhile, back at the river we wandered about, threw stones, and checked out the relief map of the area. The Moosling drove stones around on the roads of the map, crashing them down to the ground from the map edge: “Oh no crash! Oh no fall, oh crash!”

11.10am and Alex was back, having taken the shorter loop option; running down past Celeste Lake and back to the car in 17.5km. So then it was my turn.

It had gotten a little warmer and a little busier on the trail by then, so I was overtaking group after group as I marched up the switchbacks then ran along the ever wonderful Iceline trail. The forecast threatened afternoon showers, but so far the clouds didn’t look too threatening, and it was only getting warmer.

I dropped down onto the trail past Celeste Lake too, running past wildflowers, and considerably less people.

But then it was up the switchbacks of doom on the Whaleback Trail. They’re fairly relentless, the sun was baking, flies were hovering about me, sweat was dripping, and there wasn’t another soul on the trail.

But then, joy! The summit! The views! And a slight breeze! It was all worthwhile.

Getting down the back of the whale wasn’t very fast going either, with lots of rocky, rooty trail with overhanging branches. Remnants of the winter snowpack were lingering on Twin Falls Creek though, and the creek itself roared along in a scenically aqua fashion.

I was a little outraged to discover there was yet more uphill ahead, as I had to skirt around before I could descend to the base of Twin Falls.

Then it was back along the Marpole Lake trail – which turned out to be full of scree and talus, and also pretty slow going. A few peeping creatures though, so it wasn’t entirely without merit. From then on I was running back along familiar territory, past Laughing Falls and then along the valley bottom, a section of trail that actually was less painful than I remember it being when we had to coax along a tired toddler at the end of the day.

Finally back at the car and ready for a nice soak in the freezing cold river.

Distance: 25.2km
Elevation gain: 1391m
Time: 3.5 hours

Tags iceline trail, trail running, yoho national park

canada general hiking moosling

Hiking Plain of Six Glaciers for the very first time

Post author By megan
Post date 7.7.2013
No Comments on Hiking Plain of Six Glaciers for the very first time

The Plain of Six Glaciers is a very popular walk from Lake Louise, and one that we’d never quite gotten around to doing. So the day after Alex and I had run a 42km trail race, it seemed like the perfect time to get out and do this family friendly hike. No doubt it did wonders for our recovery, but it wasn’t easy going on tired legs. Especially as the Moosling spotted his Ergo, remembered what life used to be like – before he had to walk everywhere – and demanded a return to a life of luxury.

The Chateau and Lake Louise from the far end of the lake

Swarms of people along rocky ledges (I say swarms, but all people pictured were in my personal swarm though)

Getting up close and personal with some glaciers

Hiking up, high above Lake Louise

Magnificent views, lovely moraines

Dogs cooling off in the glacial lake water

So in short, it was gorgeous, but quite busy, and my legs hurt. The End.

Distance: 14km
Elevation gain: 420m

canada general hiking snow

Full moon (ish) ascent of Ha Ling Peak

Post author By megan
Post date 25.2.2013
No Comments on Full moon (ish) ascent of Ha Ling Peak

It was actually the day before full moon, but the dubious forecast was looking slightly better for Sunday than the actual full moon, and I had managed to convince a fellow mad-man that it would be a good idea to come with me and go for a night-time hike in the snow. Towards the evening there were threats of winds gusting to 40-60 km/hr, but we laughed in the face of danger and decided to go ahead and hike anyway.

We managed to leave town not too long before 7pm, driving to the trail-head on the grounds of common sense/boringness/time considerations (delete as appropriate). The sky was looking thoroughly overcast, and my fellow mad-man was making comments about the clouds thickening about the Three Sisters and the east end of Lawrence Grassi, yet we decided to push on.

The trail was just packed snow until we hit the tree-line, where we were suddenly slowed by deep drifts and very breakable crust. There was a little waist-deep wallowing, and then a little more waist-deep wallowing, some scuttling across wind crust and hoping it wouldn’t break, and then we were hopping from rock to rock, making our way through the scree.

On sticking our heads over to admire the view from the saddle, we decided that the wind really wasn’t too bad, and we may as well push on to the summit. It was a bit too windy for any camera balancing or long-exposure tripod action though, so there was just a lot of trying-to-stay-quite-still photographs, while not really wanting to remove gloves or turn off my headlamp, as it was still quite cold up there, and getting colder with all that messing about with a camera.

In a strange moment of serendipity, the clouds in front of the moon cleared for about 15 seconds just as we reached the summit, and the full moon peered out at as from a tiny hole in the overcast sky. Not long enough for a photo, but long enough to go “Ooh look, the moon really is out tonight”, what an excellent idea this was.

As we turned around and started to head down, we realised that it was indeed quite windy, and battled downhill into the gusty wind, back through the scree and down into the punchy snow for some good old-fashioned snow slogging. After not quite forever we actually made it into the trees, then scampered/slid our way back down to the car again.

In the end it was a three hour return trip, door-to-door, which is fairly slow, but not bad given the amount of the hike that was spent waist deep in snow. Same time next month?

Tags ha ling peak

canada general hiking snow trail running

Slogging up Ha Ling Peak

Because doing things the easy way is boring, I decided to try heading up to the summit of Ha Ling Peak on foot, all the way from town. That’s the way it was originally done by its namesake, so I’ve been meaning for a long time to do the full ascent. It would, perhaps, have been easier in summer though.

Into the inversion, my ice eyelashes had started to melt

The temperature was hovering around -16oC in the valley, so I was really hoping for an inversion. It was jolly cold all the way up to the pass, and then interesting to get onto the trail. Huge snow drifts barred the way into the trees, but I waded through and hoped the going would get easier. It didn’t look like there’d been any foot traffic since the last snow, so I was slowed down to a slog. On the plus side, it started to get warmer and warmer as I climbed – an inversion, hurrah!

Nearing the treeline, the path was still obvious and easy enough to travel along

Although there were hoards in the Goat Creek car park, they all had skis and were heading in the other direction, so I had the whole mountain to myself. The only question would be whether I could actually make it past the treeline. There’s usually a section there with deep drifts of snow, before you reach the wind scoured scree slopes up higher.

Low sun, just a day after solstice

Although the snow got deep, I could largely stay on the pre-compacted trail. The few times I lost it I immediately plunged into thigh-deep powder, and easily hauled myself out and back onto the proper trail again. That’s the only section I really wished for snow shoes. Beyond, the going was easy, and the summit was beautiful – warm and still, and gorgeous views. Well, comparatively warm.