Glacier remains one of the top places I’d like to revisit. We were welcomed to the park by a beautiful winding road through towering peaks which reached into the sky and vanished. The steep inclines are what catch your attention first. The road almost seems to dive into a valley in which you’re overlooked by epic ancient gods of rock.
We pulled into a small campground and found to our delight that there were available plots left, free wood and trails leading out of the area in almost every direction. Bear warnings were everywhere. The ranger explained, as I paid the ludicrously low camping fee, that bears had been spotted very close to the grounds, and one sighting actually put a large bear in amongst the tents. We hadn’t seen any bears yet on the trip, but we’d already gotten into excellent ‘bear aware’ habits, even so, we would be extra cautious here.
The Next day when we awoke to the fresh Glacier air, we decided on a nice hike up along river trail. One of the fellow campers had given us a fairly enthusiastic speech regarding the trail and promised us quite a view at the top.
It was an understatement to say we were excited about the day. So far we’d had a lot of road time, and some nice relaxing days, but this was our first chance to get out and throw on the hiking shoes. I was also particularly excited to try out my new bear bells, much to the annoyance of Steph. To say that she didn’t care for the bells would do a disservice to the level of irritation she expressed.
“You won’t be sorry if a bear pops out in front of us” I countered.
“I’m not wearing one” came the staunch retort.
In the end, I wore two.
The walk was phenomenal, we followed the track alongside the river, which being filled with glacial runoff managed to continuously fan us with a cool breeze. Starting with a fairly slow incline and plenty of space, it turned into a far more winding and narrow path. As we approached the top, exhilarated by the scenery, smells and warm sun, we broke through a few more bushes and came out on a hill of solid rock. Behind this rose the side of a few mountains, one of which was home to a superb waterfall. I think this may well have been the moment the trip became real for me. This was a new location, a different landscape to anywhere I’d been before and the scenery was stunning. I could have sat up there for days.
Instead, we ate some sandwiches Steph had packed that morning, took in the the views and Steph even took a short nap in the sun. We ambled back down to the campsite and spent the evening cooking on a big warm wood fire pit, then turned in for the night.
The following day was an exciting prospect. We were heading to Lake Louise.
Now, if you’ve never been here, it’s one of those locations that you will never be able to describe to anyone and feel like you did a good enough job. The color of that Lake is otherworldly. It literally looks like seven million trucks filled with food coloring accidentally veered into the waters.
A lot of tourists make their way to this area, but fortunately, like a lot of American parks, the vast majority of visitors see ‘The Great Outdoors’ from the safety of their RV window, so once you find a trail that goes up a hill, you gain some peace and quiet.
We climbed the trail for an hour or so until we got a nice view of the lake below, and with a little help from a telephoto lens, I snapped a nice shot of a family kayaking hundreds of meters below in an ocean of turquoise.
We continued our assent, and it seemed to hit us harder than either of us expected. Maybe because it was only our second, maybe we were feeling the effects of the previous day. Either way, by the time we reached the summit we were done! Luckily, as if the mountain gods had felt our pain, a quintessential english treat lay in wait for us at the top. Ladies and gentlemen, there is a tea house atop the mountain. My hope restored in mankind, Steph and I spent a good bit of time relaxing over a ‘good brew’.
After the surreal tea hut experience we retired to a perch by a small pond and Steph lay down on my lap. It’s worth pointing out that Steph’s feelings towards rodents, especially Canadian Ground Squirrels quite closely mimics her feelings toward fish. She lay down, fighting the urge to keep a close lookout for stealthy attacks and tried to relax.
“They’re more scared of you than you are of them, don’t worry” I blabbed on, uttering similar advise to that nonsense I’d given by what has become ‘big fish’ lake.
She eventually relaxed, and I sat taking in the beautiful scene, when out of the blue, a moderately sized squirrel flew up onto my lap, and put its paw on Steph, as if checking to see if she was okay. After a split second (during which a thought process along the lines of that’s a small hand, must’ve occurred) Steph reacted. The ground Squirrel did not return.
That night we hadn’t planned a camp site, but we were aware of a few scattered along the road north. Essentially we were heading straight through the mountains to Jasper. We cruised that evening until we found a site that had just one other person in it, a clear sign that we were progressing ever further north.
Come back for part 3 next week for our journey up into the Yukon, getting ever closer to our Alaskan goal. For more photo’s visit www.howlandphotography.com
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