Glacier National Park

Glacier is our favorite national park to visit. The second week of September we spent a 3-day weekend up in Glacier getting in what is probably our last epic hikes in of the year. The first day we puttered on up and stopped for a short hike to Hidden Lake overlook at the top of Logan Pass. Both times that we have gone on this hike we have seen bighorn sheep rams relatively close and mountain goats up close and personal.

Here I am at the overlook to Hidden Lake with a couple of the fluffy goats behind me and then a picture of Hidden Lake from the overlook.

The next day we hiked to Iceberg Lake from Many Glacier campground (~ 10 miles round trip). On the hike up Tonya got to see her first grizzly and cub eating berries above us on a mountain slope. They were pretty close to us (~ 100 m) and mama griz knew were we were, but she wasn't concerned and we weren't either with the amount of people using the trail. There was a lot of bear poop on the trail. You wouldn't want to go hiking in the dark by yourself.

The picture of Tonya is near the beginning of the hike and the bears were feeding on the slope to the right. The bushes were turning their fall colors making the hike even more prettier.

Iceberg Lake is a pretty little lake and much to our surprise there were still blocks of ice floating on the lake in September. It's located in a cirque (bowl) and receives little direct sun. Consequently, the snow remnent is able to stick around and the water is coooold. All of the glaciers in the Park are small/tiny, more like snow fields, and shrinking rapidly.

Jasper National Park

On another day in Jasper we hiked Bald Hills and saw Maligne Lake and the Elizabeth Range on the other side of Maligne Lake from Bald Hills. The Bald Hill hike was an easy hike (1,500 ft elev. gain, 12 km total distance), that provided an excellent view of Maligne Lake despite the cloud cover.

Here we are on top of Bald Hill and Tonya beginning our decent from Bald Hill. It was a bit windy and chilly on the windswept top. It never did rain on us, but we could rain showers falling elsewhere in the valley.

After our hike we decided to warm up at Miette Hot Springs. We (particularly me - Erik) aren't really hot spring soakers but it was a good use of our time that afternoon. On the way we was a large bull elk feeding right along the highway. The rack on the animal was huge. There were several cars stopped to take its picture. On mother had here little kids (all less than 5 years old) lined up within 10 feet of the elk taking a picture. If that elk had gotten spooked, the mom might have had a rack of munchkins - very unsafe. We don't have pictures of the elk as we didn't stop, but we do have a picture of female bighorn sheep in the parking lot of the hot springs looking for a handout.

Banff/Jasper continued!

Sorry it's been a while again since I've posted. I've been working hard. Both at home and work. I have some top secret stuff that I'm working on at home, but the fun part I can share is that Erik and I closer and closer to being on the "ready and waiting" adoption list. We've recently gone through our homestudy and now will be awaiting some final paperwork items. While we've been waiting we've also been doing lots of good research on strollers and car seats! Fun stuff I'll tell you. I'm appreciative of the wide range of the internet for research purposes. It sure does get you to lots of info, almost too much!
So backing up to August and our Banff and Jasper trip. We had to make some changes to our very loose itinary due to weather. The third day we woke up and did an early hike on one of the most popular trails in the parks: Johnston Canyon. It's an easy short hike up a steep walled canyon with good views of some waterfalls. We went all the way up to some ink pots about 5 miles or so from the trailhead. Here's just a couple pics from the hike.
Here's me in front of Lower Falls:
Here's Upper Falls:


Here we are in the valley by the ink pots: (no pictures of the ink pots, they didn't turn out so good. )
Here's a view of the walkway clinging to the canyon wall. Not scary because it wasn't that high up. Then we headed up to Lake Louise area and it rained and rained. Luckily they have kitchen shelters at the campsites becuase we hung out there all evening with a family from Winnepeg and one from Germany. The next morning it was still raining. So I couldn't do the one thing I wanted to do besides hike, and that was canoe on Morraine Lake. Here I am enjoying the pouring rain!
So we asked at the visitors center about the weather and they said it was a good day to drive north and go on the Icefields Parkway. Check out the website for specific info and great pictures. Our pics are good BUT it was a partly sunny/partly cloudy day so it made for lots of lighting issues. Here's some of the better pictures from our drive up. We drove most of the day and stopped when we wanted to. All of these pictures are taken from the side of the road literally, you didn't have to go on a hike to see glaciers, lakes and huge peaks!
Tonya in frint of Waterfowl Lake, not sure the names of all the peaks in the background.

We did stop to hike, of course. WE hiked up Wilcox Ridge to have a birds eye view of Athabasca Glacier which is part of the Columbia Icefield. It's huge and amazing!!

Here's Erik on the ridge when we popped out of the trees. You can see the small glacier (forgetting the name) and then down in the valley that's the road we were traveling on!

Here's another view where you could see both glaciers and part of the visitor center in the lower right hand corner. Here we are with Athabasca Glacier over Erik's shoulder. Great view!After we hiked the ridge we hiked the trail right up to the edge of the glacier. But it was a COLD wind near the glacier!!So that's just a few of the pictures. Hope you enjoyed them! More later.......