Welcome to Alberta
Views from a Mountain Pass
I’m gonna start off with a fair warning: there’s going to be a LOT of pictures of mountains. Because, well, I was in the mountains.
So, I’ve never been to the mountains in Canada before, so this trip was exciting on many levels. Adventure, the outdoors, photo opportunities, and sharing the experience with people. It came with plenty of challenges, and I’m happy that I got to face them.
Adventure begins
After landing at Calgary airport, we piled into a car to get to our staging point at another leader’s home before repacking into a U-Haul trailer. Thats when I noticed my ‘Adventure Glasses’, my sunglasses that survived my entire Australian trip, the frame broke. But that’s ok, they had a good run, and just weren’t up for the next adventure.
Our first basecamp was in Kananaskis Country, where we got the teams set up and ready for the routine that we would be the norm for the next 2 weeks. We had our debriefs on safety (wildlife and specifically bear) and first aid, and settled in for the night. In the morning as we walked around the grounds, one of the guys found an amazing thing that I never thought I’d see: nature power! For whatever reason, there was an outlet in a hollow of a tree.
Ha Ling qualifier hike
Once we moved basecamp to the next site and settled in, we organized our group and got everyone to the base and trailhead for the Ha Ling Trail. And yes, we called this 2470m (~8100ft) elevation hike a qualifier. Why? Well, a 6 day 96km expedition through the mountains is difficult to say the least, so if you can’t make a day trip up and down an easy trail on a mountain, you pose a risk for the actual hike.
The further up we went, the views got better, until the wildfire smoke started to get pushed in. By the time we got to the top (or the saddle in my case) much of the valley wasn’t visible because of the smoke. It smelled like campfire all the time.
Well, me being a bit out of shape for something like this, and getting a bit baked by the sun up above the tree line, when we got back down into the forest there was no wind, and I ended up getting a bit overheated. Heat stress is real friends, and it’s not pleasant. And, thanks to that, we had to reshuffle the leadership for the expedition and groups, and I got bumped to the second group. Which was ok, got time to recover, as well as a couple of others that caught a stomach bug at some point pre-trip.
Johnson Lake
The first group got dropped off at there trailhead for their expedition route, while the rest of us got to go visit Johnson Lake. The kids (I use the term loosely since they’re all young adults) got to ride on paddle boards for the day, during which time they discovered a rope swing, and enjoyed jumping into the lake off of.
I ended up jumping into the lake for a quick swim, and considering that this is a glacial run-off, it was as warm as Lake Superior. That is relative, of course, because I’ve also swam in Lake Superior, which is cold even during the summer, so being a glacial lake, Johnson was ‘warm’. It was refreshing though, especially after the qualifier hike the day before, and definitely helped me get back to normal operation.
Once the kids came back, we had some time to kill, ate our lunches that we made during breakfast, some of them went for a short hike along the trail around the lake, others relaxed in the sun on the beach. Then, once all was said and done, we deflated the paddleboards and packed up for the next part of our tour in this area.
Banff Town scavenger hunt
We broke our group up into teams (they voted boys vs girls) and got started on a scavenger hunt throughout Banff. Between clues, crosswords, fill in the word, and Google, we worked our way through the guessing game. Some clues were outdated, some complex, and some quite easy. The girl team gave up around clue 15 or 16 of 22, and most of the boys also gave up around clue 18, but myself and another 2 muscled our way through it to claim victory.
With free time, we set them loose to buy souvenirs or just explore, as the leaders got together for a coffee and some minor snack eating. After a couple of hours, we all met up at the designated area and headed on back to the cars to drive back to base camp.
After Banff, we got back to our base camp where we packed our things for our expedition. And not just tents and clothes; food, toiletries, first aid kits, sleeping pads, etc., anything that you were not actively going to use during your sleep was packed. Luckily, with the trailer at our disposal, we also had a place to store all our things that we didn’t need to bring for the hike; so all our extra clothing, items, personal tents if we brought them, etc, we could store it all so that we wouldn’t have to take it with us.
Once that was all organized, a quick campfire, and relatively early to bed, since our wake uptime was somewhere around 530am so we could get out and onto the trail early, since Day 1 of the hike was going to be a doozey.
