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.