Snowy Jasper

Monday 10th June 

After a huge drive day yesterday, we decided to take things slow and check out the town of Jasper, a short 10 minute drive from our campsite. I was also keen to spend some time getting acquainted with the local laundromat, so we headed there first and were delighted to find a huge, modern space complete with couches, armchairs and the best coffee we’ve found in Canada so far (seriously - it was good by Melbourne standards). One thing I have learned through sailing with mum & dad, and through my van adventures so far – van chores take far longer than you think they will. While we waited for our washing we scabbed some free wifi and planned our week out, finding the hikes we wanted to do, and working out which days we should do them on. The weather wasn’t looking amazing - though Sarah certainly brought the nice weather with her so compared to the previous few weeks, I was thinking it was delightfully warm. 

Clean laundry in hand, we left the laundromat, dumped the clean clothes in the van and proceeded to see what the town of Jasper had to offer… not a lot to be honest. It’s a cute, quiet town that is clearly run by the tourists that visit over the summer season. The Main Street offers lots of souvenir shops, eateries and not much else (save the laundromat with the excellent coffee). We decided to scout out some local op-shops to see what we could find but neither of us had much success. 

In the late afternoon we decide to called it a day and headed back to camp to make a fire, have some dinner and snuggle in for the night. 

Tuesday 11th June 

The hike we planned for today was a short 10 minute drive south of our campground - possibly the cutest campground name ever, “Wapiti” - so we had an easy morning and still arrived by 9am to the parking lot of the trailhead. The hike we selected is pretty iconic for the area, called the “5 Lakes hike”, but we opted to add an extra bonus 6th lake to make the hike more substantial - about 16km in total. We donned many layers, topped off with our raincoats (it was pouring), packed a lunch and headed onto the trial. The first lake we came to (actually the 6th bonus lake) was about 6km along a beautiful trail, with moderate inclines and alternating landscapes of treed woods, and open grassy fields of wild flowers. The rain eased slightly as we arrived at the lake, where we sat for some snacks and a trail beverage before heading back the way we came to complete the shorter, more famous 5 lakes circuit section of our day. 

You may recall, dear reader, that I have set myself the challenge of swimming (cold plunging) in every body of water I come to (caveat: that is safe and/or accessible, and/or appropriate). The first lake wasn’t accessible so I didn’t whip out my bikini there, but I knew that the 5 lakes were going to be it, and given their fame, I was determined to add all 5 to my belt/list/conquests. Sarah joined me for the first lake (in hindsight by far the coldest of the 5), and we found a private, treed area to complete our plunge (in my case: plunges, plural). It was still raining on and off and admittedly freezing, so Sarah hastily redressed (sensible), while I remained in my bikini, knowing the 3km loop that these 5 lakes lay upon made it pointless to undress and redress for each lake. So I hiked around in my bikini (stupid, and mildly humiliating as this was not an unpopular trail and every single person I passed was in pants, several layers, rain coats, beanies etc and gawked unashamedly at me as I passed). 

Lake 2 ended up being inaccessible and almost completely dried up - to call it a pond would be generous, so I had to skip it, but Lake 3, 4 and 5 were successfully conquered… despite the onlookers. 

Now may be an opportune moment to share that overcoming my social anxieties / tendency to be so self-conscious I will opt out of doing something, only to regret it later is a big part of this trip. And while my cold plunge challenge sits separate to this, they do often overlap, as I am forced to cold plunge in very public, busy places, where I am most assuredly the only person stupid enough to be engaging in such an activity and thus inevitably draw attention to myself - despite not wanting it. There is a past version of myself that would have allowed this to stop me from doing it…and I would have then regretted it later. So this trip - we are cold plunging and ignoring all the people starring, because it’s not about them, it’s about me. And while not everyone may understand, it is important to me to be able to say (to myself) I have swum in all of these amazing, beautiful, iconic places. 

Ok, back to the hike – after Lake 5, with the fear of losing toes becoming a fast reality, we set off to return to the van, where I changed, and sat with my toes in front of the heater (thank gawd for the van heater) defrosting. 

Tired but feeling accomplished we returned to camp where we sat by the fire, read our books, and chatted the night away. 

Wednesday 12th June

We wanted to walk today, but didn’t want something too far. We also needed to do a small shop to restock some essentials (peanut butter and wine). With these two missions in mind we decided that we could follow the river from our campsite all the way into town, get our supplies and walk back. This would give us a total of around 12km for the day (a decent leg stretch) and also give us peanut butter and wine (very important). I managed to pick up some gifts for some very special humans, and some souvenirs for myself as a bonus, and we treated ourselves to lunch at the local pub (it was ok - not a rave, should have spent the money on more wine instead). 

Thursday 13th June

Snow, and ice, and all things nice! Today we caught the “Jasper Skytram” up the side of a mountain that overlooked the town and surrounding landscape of Jasper. The views at the top were utterly stunning, but this was just the beginning for us. 

Now - I should interject here to say that when we spoke to the man who sold us our Skytram tickets at the bottom of the mountain and told him which hike we were thinking of doing he told us, unequivocally, that we were insane and shouldn’t and couldn’t do it. 

So obviously we went and did it. Don’t tell two single women they can’t do something. When will the men learn this? 

We walked to the peak of the mountain the Skytram ascends, along with 50,000 other tourists, snapped some photos, bemoaned how cold it was (seriously, it was like being at the top of Bulla in peak season, snow and people everywhere. Spikes absolutely essential for not embarrassing yourself by falling on your butt), and then turned our backs on the crowds to head further along the ridge, and toward our trail. The fact we were the only ones doing it, and could not see a single other person on the trail ahead should have been a clue as to what we were in for. 

To be clear - this was a mountain hike. Above the tree line. We could see an unobstructed view of the entire 6km trail ahead of us. There was not a sole on it. The snow was largely untouched - though we did tell ourselves we could see footprints ahead. 

On we went. We had a great time, with the different valleys and peaks exposing, and then protecting us from the freezing and relentless gale that was blowing across the mountains. The snow was initially slushy and melting, but quickly became waist deep, and in sections we had to rapidly crawl across it in order to distribute our body mass and prevent ourselves from falling through. Luckily some sections we could stomp and wade through, with the snow coming up to our mid-thighs or higher. It was slow, and tough going. We were quickly saturated, but having a grand old time and feeling great. There were some footprints in some sections that we could see, though they appeared to be several days old, when the weather was better and the snow would have been less extreme and deep. 

After several hours, we hadn’t made it quite as far as we initially hoped, but if we continued 

a) I decided we’d probably fall of the side of the next peak in an avalanche - the snow was untouched, it was a steep steep pitch and was a recipe for a fast unwanted descent. (See mum - I am risk averse…sorta). 

b) We’d be out there after nightfall 

So we decided to call our adventure a success at the top of the next peak, had a summit beverage, a snack and turned back. It was no faster going back, though we did have our previous path through the snowy sections to crawl through. I will admit, we did attempt to slide on our butts down the snowy hills but we didn’t have much success… until I applied the same technique a small child uses on a grassy hill. I dove sideways, extended my arms over my head and rolled sideways all the way down the hill. I also screamed with delight like a 5 year old the whole way, just to complete the picture. The snow burn was pretty excruciating but I’d do it again. 

We made it back to the Skytram to go back down the mountain at about 5:30pm, and returned to camp heading directly for the hot showers at the campground to defrost our toes and dry off…does this entire hike count as one big long cold plunge? 

Reflecting on our adventure over a warm dinner of soup and chilli we realised that while our hike wasn’t “far” (approx 7km return) the hike was a lot harder than we were giving ourselves credit for (and if we weren’t sure then, our bodies would let us know the next morning). 

Friday 14th June

We woke feeling all sorts of aches and pains from the previous day’s snowy adventure, but didn’t let that stop us. I immediately jumped into the drivers seat at 6:30am to drive us to one of the most famous lakes in the area, Maligne Lake. We had picked out the Skyline Trail to hike along today. This is actually a multi-day 45km hike, but you can hike sections of it for day hikes, and we hoped we’d get some amazing views of the area from this trail. We wanted to arrive early given how popular the lake is to visit, and anticipating the carpark filling. We arrived, had some breakfast, and packed our bags - spikes essential. 

The hike started slowly and easily, with some moderate hills and beautiful forest scenery. It wasn’t quite the challenge we were hoping for, but enjoyable none the less. After about 10km the trail opened up into a huge valley, spanning several mountains. The trail also vanished beneath waist deep snow, so with no way to follow it, we had to again accept defeat. The snow is a merciless master, and we are nothing but its humble slaves. We ate lunch atop a rock, overlooking the vast snowy valley and enjoying the sun. Just as we finished and were packing up, it started raining, which quickly turned to a light snow. The light snow turned to heavier snow as we walked, and soon it was full on snowing as we made our descent. It was utterly magical. I was grinning like a Cheshire cat, and literally skipping in sections, unable to contain my ecstasy. 

It was a long day, and we made it back to the van, with an hour drive ahead of us to get home to camp. Again we finished with a hot shower, and warm hearty meal and an early bed time (pretty sure we passed out and slept about 10 hours). 

Saturday 15th June 

Anticipating being weary from the adventures of the previous two days, we planned for today to be a rest day and stayed at camp enjoying some sun (didn’t last long), did some van chores (filling water, collecting firewood), read our books, napped, journaled and talked. In the evening we both got a bit restless and headed to the river for a very very cold swim, and a shower. 

Sunday 16th June 

Road trip time! I have been remiss to mention that on Tuesday afternoon, in a huge gust of wind that picked up and launched our full wine bottle from the table, almost put our campfire out, and tossed our snacks entirely off the hill and down the bank near our campsite…Sarah’s phone was also picked up and smashed onto the ground. So she has been phone less for a few days, and while we didn’t have any reception, she couldn’t take photos, and obviously just in general does kinda need to have a phone. Told you the weather had been bad. I’ve sort of skimmed over it, but the overnight temps have been plummeting, we’ve had rain and lots of wind and snow. We’ve had sun as well…sorta feels a bit like Melbourne haha. Or like the weather is being determinded by an elderly squirrel who just tried meth for the first time. Chaos. 

We left Jasper and made our way toward Canmore, with the hopes of arriving in the early afternoon to find a phone for her to buy. Leaving early, we stopped at a small gravel turn off by the river to have breakfast in the quiet - a nice change from the campground we’d hung out in all week. We continued on, and to my delight it snowed for about an hour as we drove south (yes mum, I was careful and I was cautious of black ice). 

Come back next week for Sarah’s departure (sad), some new friends, and even colder weather, and even colder cold plunges in Kootenay!