Candy and Jim's Great Canadian Adventure: Hiking in Yoho and Glacier National Parks

Jim and I celebrated August Long holiday by hiking in BC's national parks. The holiday is a civic holiday known loosely as August Long, and each municipality that opts to declare this holiday can name it what they wish. In Alberta it's known as Heritage Day. In BC it is called British Columbia Day.

We started our weekend by driving west past Banff and Lake Louise where most of the traffic turned off. There's always a lot of traffic heading west into the mountains on the weekends, but holiday weekends are especially heavy. Our first stop was the trailhead at Emerald Lake. Emerald Lake is a jewel among Canadian lakes. The crystal clear emerald-green-glacier-water is even more beautiful than the famous Lake Louise. The long trek to Yoho Lake crosses a gravel outwash plain and climbs through the pass to a back-country campground at Yoho Lake. The trail is 16 km (10 miles) round trip and has an elevation gain of 530 meters (1738 feet), which took us around 4.5 hours. Up top, we met an 85-year-old couple that would inspire anyone to keep active. They were camping with their children and grandchildren.

After our hike we headed to our lodging at The Heather Mountain Lodge fifty-five km west of Golden. The lodge was opened in 1996 as a Heli-Skiing lodge in the winter. In the winter, they will take you back country skiing via helicopter for a mere $1,500 per person per day. They opened four summers ago as a hiker's lodge (also offers Heli-Hiking), which is centrally located between the Glacier and Revelstoke national parks. Obviously, I had a Groupon for less than $100 a night or the Hunnicutts wouldn't be staying there! They have a great restaurant, which is good because you don't have a lot of options. Either you drive back fifty-five km to Golden or go west to Revelstoke another 110 km.

The next day's hike was the most beautiful hike we have taken since moving to Calgary. The trail is in the Glacier National Park and is called Balu Pass Trail and starts at the Roger's Pass Discovery Center. We weren't sure we would be able to take the hike due to posted "Bear Warnings." You are not supposed to hike with less than four people in your group. Since it was just Jim and I, we decided to hang around the trailhead and see if another group showed up. Luckily we met a young couple from Calgary that was willing to let us tag along with them. The trail is 13 km round trip (8 miles) with an elevation gain of 800 meters (2624 feet). The long slog is repayed by amazing views of glaciers, icefields and mountain peaks. You start out in a rainforest valley surrounded by lush green ferns and end up on a mountain-top meadow full of wildflowers (another Julie Andrews moment). We only spent a short time on top before it started raining and we decided to start our descent. Thanks to Tyrone and Lydia for getting us to the top of the trail!