Banff-Assiniboine Rockies Traverse - Part 1
August 23 - 29, 2009
PLANNING: Two years ago Mark and I went to Mt Assiniboine on a 3-day trip: one day in, one day scramble, and one day out, and I posted a few photos and a TR here. It was a spectacular trip, but a little short, so this summer we (Jodi, Mark and I) decided to do a much longer hike, combining two hikes from Don't Waste Your Time in the Canadian Rockies guidebook into an epic, one-way, 110 kilometre traverse. Having done quite a few weeklong hikes by this point, I found the trip prep to be really easy (having our own dehydrator really helped with the food, plus we had pretty much all the gear we needed already). Jodi and I drove to Salmon Arm on Friday afternoon, then spent Saturday visiting relatives in Calgary. We also had to pick up our Banff park pass (which we had reserved over the phone a few weeks beforehand) in Banff on Saturday. This was needed for days 1-3 of our hike, when we would be sleeping in Banff National park. After getting to Calgary, our transportation arrangements became somewhat more complicated.
DAY 1 (VISTA LAKE TRAILHEAD TO UPPER TWIN LAKE, 3.25h, 6.8km, +690m/-310m): On Sunday morning we went to Calgary airport to pick Mark up, and although he missed his original flight he did get there on the next flight. From there we drove straight out of Calgary to shuttle our vehicle. We drove to Canmore on Highway 1, and then turned off onto the gravel (but very smootha and flat) Spray Lakes road to get to the Mt Shark parking lot. Once there, we met up with my Mom, who coincidentally was in Kananaskis on her way to Calgary, and who very generously had agreed to help shuttle us. Leaving our car at Mt Shark, we loaded all of our bags, 4 people, and 2 dogs into my Mom's car and endured an extremely cramped drive back out to Canmore and along Highway 1 past Banff. We turned west onto Highway 93 at Castle Junction and drove almost as far as the BC border, before stopping at the Vista Lake parking lot. This was our trailhead (1700m)! We quickly packed up our bags, and began hiking at 3:30pm and 0km (all times Mountain/Alberta time, all distances cumulative from this point, distances include sidetrips). My Mom and the dogs joined us for the first half hour.
Our trail began by dropping quickly down to Vista Lake (1.4km, 1580m), and we got there around 4pm, delayed a bit by the necessary pack strap adjustments and shoelace tying. Mojo and Merlin cooled off in the lake, and my Mom turned around at this point in order to get to Calgary in time for dinner. We crossed Altrude Creek at the end of Vista Lake and immediately began climbing steeply (17-pct) up through sparse trees towards the eastern shoulder of Mt Storm. The trail was in decent shape and moderately switchbacked, though it was very hot and short on shade. Because of the sparse trees, however, we got fantastic views back down towards the highway and the mountains behind us, all the way up the climb.
At the top of the climb we came to Arnica Lake (4.7km, 2150m) at 6pm, but hiked right past it as we were in a hurry to get to camp. We went up a slight bump (2270m), then descended gently to Upper Twin Lake (6.8km, 2080m) by 6:45pm, and were happy to find out that our campsite was here, rather than at the next lake as we were expecting! We were also thrilled to find that this campsite (like every other campsite on this trip) had an excellent wire-and-pulley bear cache system, making sketchy bear hangs a thing of the past. We had a tasty meal of fajhitas before heading off to sleep in the shadow of Mt Storm. The night was very cold.
DAY 2 (UPPER TWIN LAKE TO BALL PASS JUNCTION, 6.5h, 15.8km, +590m/-750m): I was usually (always) the first person awake in the morning, and on the morning of Day 2 I got up around 7am. I wandered around camp taking a few photos of the sunrise on Mt Storm, and then woke everyone else up for our standard breakfast of custom instant oatmeal. We took camp down and started hiking right at 9am.
It was COLD that morning, and as we started to hike, everything was covered in frost. We passed Lower Twin Lake (7.8km, 2040m) at 9:30am but didn't get too close for a view, as we thought we would get a good view of it from above - we were wrong. From there our trail climbed moderately through the trees as we cut sideways up and along a steep slope. As the trail leveled out, we got into sparser trees and reached the sub-alpine meadows of Gibbon Pass (10.6km, 2300m) at 10:45am. It was beatiful and sunny here, so we lounged around in the sun for a while. We had fantastic views of Mt Storm and Gibbon Mountain, and could barely see Lower Twin Lake. At 11:15am we set off again, now descending gently through the meadows.
After a nice meadow section, the trail began to drop much more steeply (17-pct) through the forest. We came out at Redearth Creek (13.3km, 1850m) at 12:20pm, and from there it was a nice easy 20 minute walk to Shadow Lake (14.3km, 1840m). Shadow Lake was AMAZING! Mt Ball and its glaciers tower above, and the colour of the lake water is perfectly blue. We had a long lunch and very relaxing nap there.
After a well-deserved nap, we slowly packed up and began hiking again at 2:45pm. Our trail was very easy - flat, through wide-open meadows, roughly following meandering Haiduk and Hawk Creeks. We arrived at our Ball Pass Junction campsite (18.2km, 1920m) at 4pm without much difficulty. We set up and and cached our food, and decided to quickly run up to Ball Pass (2170m, at least where we stopped) to see the view before dinner. It took up about 1h each way and was 4.4km round trip. We didn't go all the way to the top, but the views of the Ball Glacier were pretty awesome (though we did get comparable views the next day).
DAY 3 (BALL PASS JUNCTION TO HEALY CREEK, 8.5h, 16.2km, +750m/-690m): The morning of Day 3 was the coldest yet - within a minute of pulling the fly off of our tent, the condensation had frozen into ice. It was so cold that one of the tent poles snapped while we were taking down the tent (but MEC fixed it for free when we got back!). We waited around for a few minutes hoping that the sun would hit us, but it was going too slowly so we just packed up and started walking. We got going around 9am, and immediately began a mild climb up to Haiduk Lake. After walking through some meadows in a nice wide-open valley, we got to sunny and windy Haiduk Lake (25.8km, 2050m) at 10:30am.
After a quick snack we put the bags back on and headed very steeply upwards though the forest, quickly coming out into the alpine and a big scree field. This was Whistling Pass (28.0km, 2300m); the scree was easy to walk on, though it went on for quite a while before we got to the summit. What a view, though! Look back, we could see all the landmarks we had passed so far: Storm, Gibbon Pass, Mt Ball and its Glacier and Haiduk Lake. Definitely one of the best (if not THE best) view of the trip. We walked a little bit past the summit and sat down for a snack and a totally new view down to Scarab Lake.
After the break, we pressed onward. We traversed above Scarab and Egypt Lakes for a while, and then dropped VERY steeply down switchbacks to Egypt Lake (31.0km, 2030m), where we stopped for a long swim and lunch break from 1:45pm - 3pm. The water was good - cold but not freezing, and we had a nice grassy beach to relax on.
After leaving Egypt, we walked through the Egypt campground and then crossed Pharaoh Creek. From there we began a steady climb up through the trees, occasionally breaking out into beautiful meadows. From the meadows we could see just about forever - we could look back and see parts of our whole route, including Mt Storm, Gibbon Pass, Mt Ball, Whistling Pass, and Egypt/Scarab Lakes. It really made us feel that "Wow, we've come a LONG way!"
We continued climbing into wide-open alpine meadows, and got to Healy Pass (35km, 2370m) at 5pm. What a view! Behind us we could see almost everything we had already hiked, and in front of us we could see all the way to Mt Assiniboine. Almost our whole 7-day trip visible from one point! At the pass we talked to some Germans who had come to Banff park may times before, they had a dog with food saddlebags. We descended from the pass, thinking that our campsite was just a few minutes away. We met some Park rangers doing trailwork, and realized that the camp was actually another hour and a half away! My knee was getting really sore and we had to descend quite a bit, so that was an awful way to end the day. Oh well. Healy Creek campsite (38.8km, 1980m) was nice, though deep in trees so not much of a view. It was also the first campsite that we shared with other campers (our first two camps were deserted). We were pretty tired so all we did was make dinner and filter water - we were asleep early!
