Ain't no mountain high enough

The drive from Calgary to Banff was bleak; to say the least... looking ahead you could see the base of the Rocky Mountains with some rather large black clouds filling in around them, meanwhile in the rear view mirror it looked like sunshine and clear skies! It felt like we were heading in the wrong direction! 

We made it to Banff though and the rain ceased long enough for us to enter the visitor centre where the elderly ranger underestimated our hiking abilities and recommended we do all the green level beginner hikes and stick to the trails around town! We had other plans though and hit the harder higher elevation trails in attempt to find the views!! We were limited though as a lot of the higher elevation trails with the good views were still snow affected..typical..  Hiking in the Rockies, similar to Whistler we found out and a lot of the north Americas, is really limited to the true summer time from July to September. 

Between unpredicted rain showers we managed to get in a few good hikes around Banff and managed to see some pretty good sites. We also started to enjoy the extended sun hours and started one of our hikes off at about 530pm, returning to the car at about 8pm to full sunlight! It seemed like a treat at the time but is something we later found we were going to get a lot of!

 After Banff we headed to Lake Louise, which is still within the Banff National Park. The goal here was to capture some impressive reflection shots in the lake. Unfortunately the weather had other plans for us though as we woke on the first morning to rain and clouds. Once again a lot of the higher altitude hikes we had read about and been recommended were snowed out, but we persisted with our first hike up to Lake Agnes. The walk took us up to a little tea house, a reflective lake (conveniently named 'mirror lake' like all the others we had been to in the US) and a few water falls. The clouds moved on as we reached the top so we were able to get some cool photos but as we made our descent to the parking lot they closed back in again. 

Being a weatherman in the Rockies would be a very difficult job, with the mountains causing havoc to predictions and therefore leading to very unreliable weather reports in the morning! We decided not to bother with checking the weather reports and just went with what the day brought us.

The following day we woke early in an attempt to capture some cool shots of the sun rising over Lake Louise, but typically we woke to rain so decided to stay in bed. When we finally did rise, it was still cloudy and miserable but we were determined not to let it spoil our day. We hiked the 'trail of six glaciers' hike at Lake Louise, which was a fun little hike that took us through lots of snow, along ridges, through waterfalls and up to, yet again, another tea house. We reached the top and it started to rain a little but the wallet had been left in the car so we weren’t able to warm up with a nice little cup of coffee. All was not lost though and after the rain ceased a little bit, we donned our rain jackets, gloves, rain coats for our backpacks and the trusty beanies, and made our way to the base. While we weren't able to capture the photos of the area that we had been hoping to, we still managed to have an awesome time and get in a few good, challenging and definitely different hikes in. 

It was then onto Jasper National Park. We arrived late in the afternoon and checked into the largest camp site ever seen. There were 780 sites split up into 67 loops lettered from A to, in some cases O. It was quite ridiculous and while the campsite wasn't full we were allocated a site between 2 families with young children. The camp site had showers and it was another nice treat to feel clean again. 

We were starting to notice big differences between the Canadian and US National Parks. Firstly was the development. In Canada development restrictions were pretty loose and as long as you were providing a service to the tourism, you were able to purchase land and build, this meant the central villages were a lot larger, there were plenty more gift shops and even tea houses at the top of some of the mountainous hikes. In the US, they had very tight restrictions for future development once an area had become a national park in order to preserve the wilderness; definitely the approach we are in favour of! After the development was the entry fees; In the US entry was per vehicle and passes lasted for 7 days. In Canada it was per person, per day... it didn’t end up working in our favour as well as it had in the US! Finally, were the camp sites. In Canada the price for a site was a bit more than in the US and then there was an additional fee for a permit to allow you to make a fire. They did have hot showers though so we just went without a fire!

The weather wasn't on our side the day we got into Jasper and we kind of felt like we had been walking solidly for the past few days so decided to do something different and go for a horse ride! After finding a hidden secret in Jasper town, a little organic vegan cafe and fuelling up on the most amazing real coffees we had had since leaving Australia we met our new friends, Bob and Punchy. They took us through the bushes, alongside a few of the picturesque lakes (which would have looked much more impressive if the sun was out) and through some areas that were closed due to bear activity. Unfortunately we didn’t see any bears but saw lots of elk (one of which followed us for some time along the trail!), deer’s, squirrels and a couple of osprey that had set up house at the top of a light pole. It was nice to do something different and I felt like a kid again being back up on a horse!

After narrowly avoiding rain on our horse ride, we headed out to the Miette Hot springs for a soak in the hot pools and an evening at the Pocahontas camp ground!  The water was from natural hot springs but was cooled with town water and treated before making its way into the concrete baths. It wasn’t as natural as some of the springs we had been to in NZ but the warm water (and of course the shower after it all) was well worth it!

We had hoped for some more hiking and site seeing the next day but once again the weather was against us and the sun didn’t come out until later in the afternoon after wed done all our exploring. We did see some pretty cool scenery, some (would be) picturesque lakes and a bear up a tree!

Jacque, one of the girls I had worked with at the Salomon store in Whistler over the winter had just moved to Jasper so we caught up with her for a drink and were made very jealous by all the adventures she had had in Whistler last summer. We left with the summer goal to do as much hiking as possible and concur Black Tusk; a rather large rock structure on the top of one of the mountains visible from Whistler village.  Jacque also showed us the nightlife in Jasper and we ended the evening at a fundraising event where 3 of the local (straight) guys were dolled up by the local hairdressers and then danced and lip synced to some provocative songs pretending to be the opposite sex. It was quite funny and well attended, with just about the entire town crammed into the little pub.

Just before leaving Jasper we treated ourselves to breakfast out at our new little favourite coffee shop before hitting the road for another big day of driving.