Day 1 - Up to Baker Lake
Baker Lake
We started our week long hike through the Rockies by Lake Louise. Not ‘at’, way too busy; in fact we passed 2 shuttle buses on our way in to the trailhead that were heading to Lake Louise. But why not start there? Well, a few actually, mostly logistical, but I digress.
Our launching point was at the Fish Creek Trailhead, and our first campsite was Ba15, which I know doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot to many people.
Explained: Banff NP named it’s trails and sites based off of the creek names. If you look at the BackCountry Trail Map from Parks Canada, the sites leading to Skoki Lodge are named Sk##. Baker Creek, which flows from Baker Lake, are prefixed with Ba##. Ok, now back to the story.
So why did we take Fish Creek Trail? Well, because the map we had wasn’t as updated as we thought, and Baker Creek Trail was no longer an option with the park. So we had to go the long way around, from our original ~15km(9.3mi) hike in, to about 21km (13mi). The distance doesn’t sound that bad, but remember that we are carrying about 30-40% of our body weight in our packs, and we are hiking uphill to get into the mountain range.
The climb up was gradual and all uphill (obviously), and initially a bit boring. It looked more like an access road, probably was used for as much, and the area was heavily wooded, so there were not as many great views. But, once we got off the Fish Creek Trail, and onto the Skoki Trails, the forest started opening up and the views started coming in.
We took a small break at Halfway Hut (because it was half way to the Skoki Trail, creative, I know) and soaked in the amazing views that were now starting to be visible. The Hut itself made for a great photo op with Redoubt Mountain in the background.
Boulder Pass challenged us as we made our way up, I use that term lightly only because we were fresh and not fully prepared for the climb, but once we were over we saw the expanse of Ptarmigan Lake before us. Pretty much all of the group took out their cameras and phones to take panoramics of the beautiful reflective lake with mountains in the background.
The cloudy day we were having was also a bit of a blessing, as we avoided getting sunburnt on the first day, and for those without sunglasses (mine broke when we landed in Calgary), gave us the time to adjust our sight to the outdoors.
Continuing on around Ptarmigan Lake and through a valley, we finally got to Baker Lake, and after the obvious photo opportunities, we continued around and onward to the first camp site that we would pass by, Sk11. We took about an hour break here, giving us time to recover, and for a couple of individuals that still weren’t 100% recovered from a stomach bug that was going around, a chance to use the outhouse.
The path now took us through a little bit of bush, by Fossil Mountain, and into a vast field of openness. It was leading us into the Heather Ridge valley, a partially open field with streams running through it, that eventually lead us to where the elevation was dropping again to our actual site for the night.
Now, that stream that I mentioned. I’ve heard of amazing mountain streams before, the clarity, freshness, etc. It is without a stretch of the imagination when I say that if the water had no ripples in it, that you wouldn’t have thought there to be water in it. This was our water source if we ran out of water in our hydration packs while in the valley, which we of course filtered through our gravity filters (no one wants gardia).
The valley led us very quickly into quiet, old, deep green, moss covered forest. I thought that the climb up was rough, but after getting tired, going down hill took a nice toll on my knees. There were also, in some spots, obstacles from avalanches or wind storms that we need to get over, around, or under, making the descent a little bit more interesting, and tiring as well.
Now, I expected us to reach the site fairly quickly, and I was wrong. I also ran out of water around the 15km mark, so the last 6km or so when we picked up the pace and wanted to just make it to camp, I was drying up right quick. Turned out that the one person that I was bringing up the rear with, we were only about 10min behind the main group. That surprised us, considering that they had a good 30-45min head start on us, so we were really hustling to get to camp apparently!
Camp was set up, we all got our snacks and dehydrated meals out for dinner, and I went to bed early to try and recuperate after a rather tiring and exciting day in the mountains. Day 1/7 done!
