| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2005-08-25 16:51:32 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Lake O'Hara When I solicited advice on where to go from the MITOC list, one place came up several times: lake O'Hara. One Canadian friend mentioned that you can't really go wrong in the Rockies, but that Lake O'Hara was the crown jewel of it all. He was right. Because the area had previously been overused, Parks Canada implemented a quota system on the area today that severely restricts the number of people that can get backcountry permits to camp and also limits convient access to the area. Most permits are given out three months ahead of time (as in, call the morning exactly three months before you want to go). To get there, it's a 7 mile bus ride in down a private road, and you have to get a spot on a bus that they operate. Fortunately, they open up a few day use spots to people that show up at the bus stop early in the morning, so that's what we chose to do. We woke up early, got there by 6:15 am, and waiting. The next person showed up around 7, and then several people at 7:30. When the ranger came by at 8:15, she was able to give 6 of us spots on the bus in. Good thing we got there early! Summer and I took the bus in after paying something like $15 a piece. Once we arrived, there were nice facilities there, and we looked right across at the gorgeous lake, right at the very point where the American artist Sargent painted serveral of his famous paintings of the area. Just absolutely amazing. One thought hit both of our minds: breakfast! We hadn't eaten yet, so there were blueberry pancakes with out name on them waiting for us! After breakfast, we decided to take a nice, short, but scenic hike: the All Souls' Alpine Route. In their terminology, and alpine route is basically a blaized trail that's not obvious and requires a little route finding. Sounds like fun! We were quickly up to the treeline then broke from a named trail to start the All Soul's Route. We found ourselves on a little plateau area, and saw dark clouds drifting in....bringing snow! Amazingly, there was almost no wind--either on us our around the high peaks that surrounded us. Light flurries hit us around 7000ft, with snow sticking probably around 8500 feet or so....very pretty. We basically did a scree hike, up as far as the scree would allow us to go before hitting the buttresses of mountains we were on. The views were absolutely stunning. I would have simply let me camera go wild, but I had to conserve pics as my battery was getting low and I had filled up my mmemory card during the Iceline hike. Needless to say, some Iceline pics got deleted. The battery, though, I couldn't really help. We made out way out to the All Soul's Prospect, the big grand viewpoint on the trail.....wow. Simply wow. The clouds cleared a bit, leaving the dusting of snow on the peaks in front of us that separated British Columbia from Alberta. Just.....wow. You have to see if for yourself. We met a lovely couple of ladies from Calgary, and decended with them while talking about all sorts of stuff. We cancelled plans to get in a quick hike over to Macarthur Lake, and instead had a nice long lunch with our Canadian friends. Before long, we had to catch the bus back out, unfortunately. It killed me to leave such a beautiful place just after getting there, but we couldn't stay, and we did need to get on the road to keep our schedule and pick up our kayak in time. |