Day Seven. Jasper

We woke up in the morning and opened the car door to find a bunch of elk staring at us. Bit of a surprise but a nice one none-the-less. We decided that today was a hiking day, so we went on a 10km walk up a steep hill to the Bald Hills.


One of the lady elks hanging around our campsite.

No, seriously, it was worth all the effort. We took the road out to Maligne Lake (a very famous lake – the most photographed in Canada apparently) and before we’d even got to the lake, we saw a wonderful large bull elk having a bit of chow on the river plains – fabulous. (Jethro would like to add that we wouldn’t have seen this if his map-reading was better as we missed the turning we were supposed to take.) We carried on along the correct road and saw another bull elk just at the side. (My turn to point out that wrong turns in a park as big as this one are generally a Very Bad Idea and if you’re meant to see an elk you will.)


The impressive bull having a bit of brekkie.

I must confess that the best wildlife spot of the day has to go to Jethro – he may be a rubbish map-reader but he more than made up for it by spotting a black mummy bear and her two little bundles of fur in the form of cubs, eating some berries at the side of the road. Every other car missed it (as they were going so fast – idiots), but we saw them and stopped to marvel at the cuteness of it all. The mum was so small, it quite took away my fear of bears. The only problem was that in typical sods law fashion, we were snapping away when the memory card decided it was full on the camera. Aaaaaargh! And then, just as we were trying to rectify that, a ruddy great yellow school bus full of noisy children came around the corner and scared the bears away – double aaaaaaaargh!


Look! It's a bear!


And two cubs!

The hike up was tough, there’s no getting around that. It was uphill all the way in varying degrees of steepness and we were the only souls on it, so we made a lot of noise in case any more bears were lurking. We saw a lot of red squirrels, and were beginning to understand them when they squeak a lot – they have different squeaks depending on their mood and are quite good at posing for the cameras when they want to. I think they're are my favourite animals here so far.


The old fire access road that was the trail up the mountain


The view from the top


Jethro on bear patrol


Another great view of the lake - with the glacier in the middle of the peaks opposite


Lunchtime!

We followed the dirt road steadily for about an hour and a half – with lots of rest stops – and made it to the top. What a view. We could see down to Maligne Lake, across numerous peaks and the most breathtaking sight of all was a glacier – really fantastic. Had a spot of lunch looking at all this marvellous scenery and saw a few more fellow hikers had braved it to the summit – there was no way we were going right to the top – the onward path looked like a killer.

We took a different route down – and were pleased that we hadn’t taken it up. It took us 17 minutes to scramble down the path but it would have taken about four hours to climb up it – it was very steep. I felt extremely embarrassed to pass a fifty year old–ish couple lugging camera equipment all the way to the top who were barely breaking sweat. Oh to be old and fit as a fiddle!

More squirrel natterings on the way down and we were back at the edge of the lake. We took a breather in form of a cup of tea in the large restaurant near the lake and feeling fortified, went for a wander. We were going to take a boat ride over the lake, but at $41 a pop each, we decided against it. We booked in to go horseriding tomorrow for three hours and that’s something we're very excited about.


A view from the shoreline


The two of us trying not to look too pooped

On the drive home, I commented that I’d love to see some bighorn mountain sheep. Lo and behold, we turned a corner and there they were, standing in a little herd in the middle of the road and sticking their heads in all the cars that had stopped to gawp – including ours. We got a little worried when they started nibbling bits of the car, but what the hell, it doesn’t belong to us!


Talk about getting up close and personal!


Are you looking at me funny, eh?