Banff-Assiniboine Rockies Traverse - Part 2

Return to Part 1 of the Banff-Assiniboine trip report

DAY 4 (HEALY CREEK TO PORCUPINE CAMPGROUND, 9h, 20.1km, +600m/-780m): The morning of Day 4 was uneventful - just get up and go, hiking by 8:30am. We knew we had to climb out of Healy Creek, so we just wanted to get it done. It turned out to not be that bad and we were at Simpson Pass (40.7km, 2120m) by 9am. This pass had zero views, but a few interesting borders. It was the border between BC and Alberta, with large concrete markers, as well as the border between Kootenay and Banff national parks, though we stayed on the Banff park side for the time being. From Simpson Pass we had a nice flat traverse through trees for quite a while, and then a short climb between two bumps called "Twin Cairns," finally getting out onto a ridge (featuring a park bench!) overlooking all of the Sunshine Meadows ski resort (43.9km, 2360m). Back to civilization (briefly)! This was also the site of our closest encounter with a bear. Some tourists coming the opposite direction told us they saw a grizzly bear running away from us at top speed. We never saw it, but apparently our bells scared it away. Good to know the bells work!

The hiking through Sunshine Meadows was sublime - flat, wide open, and spectacular views all around. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me. We took a few breaks along the way to take in all the views, and we also passed a signboard telling us that we had crossed the Continental divide. There was one small section of elevation where we gently dropped down and then climbed shortly up to an unnamed pass (2380m) above Howard Douglas Lake. We dropped down to Howard Douglas lake (51.8km, 2270m) for lunch at 1:30pm. It was a nice lake, with great views around, though a little too windy for a swim.

From Howard Douglass it was more unbelievable meadows. They just kept on going forever. We also passed a lot of marmots or gophers on the side of the trail, and also passed the imposing-sounding Mt Fatigue. It was a VERY gradual climb up to broad Citadel Pass (55.6km, 2320m, where we left Banff Park and entered Mt Assiniboine Provincial Park in BC.

The trail dropped gently through meadows from Citadel pass for a short time, but once it entered the trees it got STEEP! Fortunately it was switchbacked, but we were basically walking down a chute. We did see a lot of wildflowers on the side of the trail. The trail dropped and dropped... hard on the knees, especially once we found out our camp was not where we originally thought. Finally we got down off the slope into the valley, and found a fantastic BC Parks campsite - bear cache, nice flat tent pads, and free! This was Porcupine campsite (58.9km, 1800m). We shared it with a friendly couple from California who were taking several months to just hike/backpack around North America. It sounded like a pretty good way to see a lot at once! It was their first night on the trail so they had packed in steak and beer (among other things) for dinner. We ran into them a number of times over the next few days as they were going the same way we were.

DAY 5 (PORCUPINE CAMPGROUND TO LAKE MAGOG, 6h, 15.2km, +450m/-50m): We had just finished two very long days and were all fairly tired and sore. We were encouraged that we had just one more day to get to Lake Magog, the highlight of our trip, and that we were going to stay there for two nights, giving us a rest day on Day 6. So, we just got up early (not quite so cold anymore at night or in the mornings) and started hiking by 9:30am. Our trail went through the bottom of the "Valley of the Rocks," so named because of the huge boulders and scree that slid down from the steep, crumbling slopes above and filled the valley floor. Our trail twisted gently up, down, and around the boulders, with only one sustained climb early in the morning. After getting to the top of a very minor pass (2100m), we dropped shortly down to Og Lake (67.3km, 2050m) and ate lunch there at 1:30pm. Og Lake itself was baking hot - it was surrounded by white rocks that acted like a reflecting dish, so we ate in the shade of a signboard. I remember there being a lot of horseflies. Not our best lunch stop. A few people stopped by and mentioned that they had seen a mother grizzly with 3 cubs on the trail we were about to hike - yikes! We never saw any bears though - good thing.

From Og Lake it was just flat, pleasant walking through gorgeous meadows. This really is the best kind of hiking (well, maybe it's tied with walking along a sharp ridge). We arrived at Lake Magog campsite (74.1km, 2200m) at 4:30pm, and were happy to find that it was almost empty! Last time we were here the campsite was full and we had to improvise a tent site. I wonder if there were fewer people here this time because school was already back in session in Alberta? At any rate, we quickly set up our tent, and then went down to Lake Magog for a VERY refreshing swim and a delicious dinner. We stayed down at the lake drinking hot chocolate and rum until the stars came out.

DAY 5 (NUB SCRAMBLE, 4.5h, 10.4km, +/-550m): Day six was our rest day, which meant sleeping in (8:15am!) and not having to take down the tent! We decided to do a day hike up "The Nub," which Mark and I have done before. The scramble was walking mostly - there were a few sections that felt a little exposed but were not actually that bad. I'll let the photos describe the views. After the scramble was another fantastic evening of swimming, dinner and relaxing down at Lake Magog.

DAY 7 (LAKE MAGOG TO MT SHARK LOT, 8h, 26.8km, +200m/-650m): Well, finally it was time to leave the Rockies... except we had our longest day ahead of us still! We got up before dawn (5:30am) and were hiking at 6:30am, to be sure that we would be out with lots of time to spare for a victory dinner in Canmore! It was very cool hiking past Lake Magog as the sun came up. Our exit from the Assiniboine Core area was Wonder Pass (89km, 2400m), which we hit at about 8:15am. At this pass we AGAIN crossed park boundaries, this time from Assiniboine to Banff park again. Coming down from Wonder Pass, Mark did a short detour to get a better view of Mt/Lake Gloria, while Jodi and I just took our time descending. It was fairly steep, but again nicely switchbacked and not really that long of a descent. We got partial views of Mt/Lake Gloria, and fantastic panoramas of Marvel Lake. We traversed for more than an hour on the shrubs and scree above Marvel Lake, then descended for a bit to have lunch at Bryant Creek shelter (98km, 1850m) at 11:30am.

And... that's about it! Except for the 13km slog out through Bryant Creek on flat, scenery-free trails, mostly in dense trees but, at the end, out in the open sun. The only few things of interest: we began to pass more and more people that were clearly just there for the day, which is always a funny contrast when you've been hiking for a week. We passed our final park boundary, out of Banff and into Peter Lougheed provincial park in Alberta. And it seemed like the final few kilometres took forever! But then we saw some kind of loud red mechanical beast drive across our trail and - hooray, we were at the Mt Shark Lot (111.3km, 1750m)! Our car was waiting faithfully for us there. It had taken us about 3.5 hours to get from Bryant Creek to the Mt Shark lot. We didn't linger, we just changed into our wonderful clean clothes and shoes, and booked it out on the Spray Lakes road to Canmore. We had our victory dinner at The Grizzly Paw Brewery in Canmore, which was great, as it had exactly what we needed - burgers and microbrews!

From Canmore we decided to start driving to get as close to Vancouver as possible before we slept. In the end we just ended up driving through the night, as there were three of us, and we got home to Vancouver around 6:30am the next morning. This was great as we could sleep until noon, and then had a whole day to unwind, unpack and nap. What an incredible trip!