MORE HIKING in JASPER

9th and 10th July MORE HIKING

Wednesday, my birthday, was a good day for a full day’s hike. So with enough food and water for almost any eventuality that I was willing to imagine, we set off to climb up to Verdant Pass.
The first 4.5 km are pretty straight forward, a nice wide path following the Astoria River. After one hour we looked for the telltale flat, 5ft long boulder that alerted us to the unmarked path taking off to the left. This is the Verdant Pass trail. Alas and alack we’d made a foolhardy decision not to bring the bug spray (no mosquitoes on a cool day and up high – WRONG).
The path here was narrow and rooty, climbing rapidly, great exercise for feet and legs and lungs. Up and up we went through trees and across little creeklets and springs, encountering several female white tailed ptarmigans. This quail-sized fowl has beautiful dark markings and moves completely silently. Each time we saw one, it was close to the path and would move towards and then away from us, sometimes stopping and remaining very still, perhaps in order to distract us from her young.
Finally we reached the subalpine meadows with a deep gorge dropping down below us. We were in the lower slopes of Mount Edith Cavell. Scrambling along a sporadic and very rocky path, periodically indicated by rocky cairns, we found our way to Edith’s first cirque (a cirque is a glacial feature that looks like an enormous amphitheatre) and a mountain creek full of boulder-hopping boulders. It was there that we planted ourselves for lunch. Food at the top of a mountain always tastes so delicious.
From our creek edge picnic spot, we could look one way up at the cirque with its characteristic arc shape, vertical ridges and horizontal bands; or we could look across the wide open, flat and pebble spattered meadow, bobbing with wildflowers, towards a spring-green Verdant Pass and Edith’s 2nd cirque; or we could turn around and look towards the steep slope that we’d just ascended.
After a brief rest we walked back across the meadow and took a good look across at Chevron Mountain. From where we were we could see its folded sedimentary strata and a glacier sitting in the bowl of the cirque.
This was a 6 hour hike and another glorious day in the mountains.

The next day, Thursday, was raining and cold. Our plan had been to do another slightly shorter hike, the Bald Hills hike. We tried the “ignoring the rain” routine again and drove all the way up a scenic road with the very full Maligne (pronounced Maleen) River rushing its way down along beside us.
The mighty water in all the rivers is a creamy pale aqua. This is due to the “rock flour”, sediment from the boulders that are caught in the glaciers grinding against the bedrock, as the ice moves.
However this time the clouds sat heavy on the mountains. We couldn’t even see the Bald Hills and they couldn’t see us. The rain had set in for the day, so we headed back down the road to the start of a short walk and view point of the Maligne Gorge.
The gorge was deep and spectacular with caves and pot-holes and pools far below us. As we followed the river there were noisy waterfalls as the water crashed its way over the crazy rock shapes. It was an impressive picturesque 45 minute walk.

The postlude animal report: during our time in Jasper we saw a couple of groups of bighorn sheep; one group of mountain goats, my personal favorite, white and bearded; several small herds of elk, and one lone handsome antlered male; and one young black bear close to the road.