SASKATCHEWAN
Friday
brought a big shift in our trip. I spent
the first week and a half backpacking with Dave. The rest of the trip would be with my wife
Christy. First, we were spending 3 days
taking a mountaineering class with Yamnuska Mountain
Adventures (http://yamnuska.com/). The “snow and ice” long weekend would teach
us how to use ice axes and walk in crampons on glaciers. After two days of instruction, we would
attempt to climb a major peak on day 3.
The
class would take place in the Icefields area at the
southern end of Jasper National Park.
After sleeping in a little Friday morning, I got up and made us french toast, bacon, and coffee
for breakfast. Then we broke camp and
drove north. This was my fourth time
driving this part of the Icefields Parkway in the
last three days, but the scenery was still spectacular. We went straight to the Icefields
Campground, which is smaller and more primitive than the one in Lake
Louise. We arrived shortly after noon,
and the campground was already nearly full.
It ended up being completely full by 2pm. We took a site in the middle of the loop,
near the cooking shelters, water, and an outhouse. Usually I prefer a more private spot, but it
ended up being a very nice site in my favorite campground of the trip.
We
had lunch at the campsite and watched folks driving through looking for a
site. After eating, I was carrying some
of the food back to the car when we were attacked. A noise made me turn, just in time to see a
raven take off with part of my loaf of bread!
We were a lot more cautious about leaving food unattended for even a
moment after that.
After
lunch we took a warmup hike to the Saskatchewan Glacier. The hike started out at a fascinating spot
where the North Saskatchewan River disappears down a sink to run through a deep
slot canyon. We crossed a bridge over
the slot canyon, following an old road.
We hiked for about ten minutes before I realized that I’d left the bear
spray in the car. Oops. I ran back to retrieve it and rejoined
Christy a few minutes later.
Parts
of this hike were in deep forest. That
meant reduced visibility, which is concern in grizzly country. Aside from carrying bear spray, the best
protection is to make plenty of noise.
The easiest way to do that (if you aren’t hiking solo) is to keep up a
steady conversation. The problem with
that strategy is that occasionally you run out of things to talk about.
I
came up with a fun solution to this problem.
I suggested a game, where we substituted “bacon” for a word in famous
movie and book titles. I really have no
idea where that inspiration came from, but it was pretty entertaining. In fact, we played this game numerous times
throughout the trip. Many of the ones we
came up with were pretty bad, but there were a few memorable ones:
Dances With Bacon
Gone
With the Bacon
Bacon
on 34th Street
Bacon
at Tiffany’s
Chariots
of Bacon
Baconnado
Bacopolypse Now
Saving
Private Ryan’s Bacon
Bacon
in Wonderland
The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to Bacon
The
Bacon at the End of the Universe
Life,
the Universe, and Bacon
So
Long, and Thanks for All of the Bacon
Obviously
all of these movies would star Kevin Bacon.
We
reached a junction, and took a side trip on the old road to view a waterfall on
a tributary of the North Saskatchewan River.
A good view would’ve required scrambling down the hillside, and Christy
wasn’t up for that. We returned to the
junction and picked up another old road. We followed it back around to the river
directly across from the Icefields Parkway. We were almost back where we started, but on
the correct side of the river. We
continued on the old road, passing a good view of the upper part of the
waterfall we’d seen earlier. It was at
this point that I realized that my camera battery was dead, and that I’d left
all of the spare batteries in the car.
So, all of the photos from this hike were taken with Christy’s phone.
We
left the highway, and then the river, climbing up and over a ridge through deep
forest. We dropped back down to the river, and continued upstream. We passed through a boulder field that was a
little tedious, but most of the hiking was easy. We actually saw a guy on a mountain bike at
one point. He looked like a mountain
climber, so maybe he was just using the bike to speed up the approach. We also saw a single guy in a boat paddling
downstream. I hope he got out before he
reached the sink leading down into the slot canyon! They were the only other people we saw.
We
passed another waterfall on a side stream, but a more impressive cascade was a
short distance up the valley. It’s on an
unnamed stream, but is fed by a sizable glacier. At the time, I guessed it was at least 400’
high. Looking at the map, I may have
misjudged it. If anything, it is quite a
bit taller – possibly close to 2,000’!
The upper portion of the falls were hidden from
view from our vantage point. We hiked to
the base of the falls, which was thundering thanks to the warm, sunny
afternoon. Crossing the creek was tricky
since I’d worn running shoes instead of waterproof boots. I had a hot spot on my foot from the boots,
and I wanted to give my feet a rest. I
ended up icing them a bit, since it wasn’t possible to cross the creek without
getting my feet wet.
We
continued a bit farther, passing “Commando Rock” along the way. This area was actually used by the U.S.
military for training prior to WWII.
Soldiers had carved “Commando Rock” into an impressive square boulder adjacent
to the old roadbed.
We
stopped on the terminal moraine, which offered a nice view of the Saskatchewan
Glacier and Castleguard Mountain beyond. After a break we began the hike back. The return hike was much faster. Although the hike was pretty easy, Christy
was determined to avoid knee problems on this trip. We drove over to the Icefields
Visitor Center, which has a hotel and restaurant. I bought a bag of ice from the dining room,
and we took it with us back to camp. For
dinner we had burgers, corn on the cob, and salad while enjoying a
campfire.
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