Day 29
Zero day in Jasper. I spent a lot of the day homelessly searching for good Wifi around town and finally “settled in” at the Parks Canada Visitors Center. They politely ignored me as I spent kind of all day leeching their free Wifi. Thanks, team. Adi’s having a little “crisis”-she feels really burned out, and discouraged by the forest fire smoke, and a bunch of her gear is all breaking at the same time, and she doesn’t know if she wants to continue. I tried to be as neutral as possible-of course I want to finish with her,and I love her company-it feels sisterly-but I also strongly feel that people need to listen to their intuition about this stuff-it’s a fool’s errand to keep pushing through a thruhike if you genuinely are burned out. She had met a guy named Christian on the Skyline Trail who is a local hiking guide and let her stay at his apartment in town which was a huge stroke of luck. In the evening we braved the hordes of tourists downtown and went to a Korean restaurant which was so delicious. Back at the hostel later I called Constanza to talk details about the Hayduke which we start about October 1st. It’s REALLY hard to mentally change gears and think about the logistics of another difficult trail when I’m still very much in this one. I couldn’t even hardly begin to explain this trail to her on the phone-it’s just…..so…..much.
Day 30
I left Jasper Hostel in the morning and started walking down the road, but was only walking about 15 minutes when a lady pulled over and offered me a ride down. She was extremely confused when I asked her to drop me off on the side of Highway 16 because that’s where the GDT goes for 13 miles. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you on the side of the highway!” I reminded her that she had found me originally on the side of the road so this was really no different. Adi was still back in town- she had a second wind of motivation and tried to fix all her gear, and wanted to leave a little later in the day and hitchhike the full 13 mile highway section. I walked about 5 miles along the highway before getting fed up with it and feeling like this was dumb. So I hitchhiked from a rest stop for the final 8 miles, got picked up by a lady from Grand Prairie far to the north and her teenage son. The Trail took a dirt road into the woods- it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and for some reason I just loved this forest I suppose because there were lots of deciduous trees and the way they smell, reminds me of the East Coast which I inexplicably still miss despite all of my awesome mountain experiences. Eventually the route turned off the dirt road into a rough trail into the woods, I sat down on my pack to have a snack in the middle of the trail facing the road and Adi came up a few minutes later. It was funny because it looked like I was sitting there in the middle of nowhere waiting for her-I said, “step into my office” and she laughed. She has packed out a total of about a kilogram of homemade fudge from Jasper. We walked a few more miles up the trail and found a nice campsite for the night. We comically backtracked 10 minutes down the trail for water only to find another stream directly next to the campsite the next morning.
Day 31
Today was beautiful and great hiking for 95% of the day and then an absolute nightmare for the final 5%. For some reason I woke up in a terrific mood at 5:30 in the morning. Or maybe it was 6:30. We kept switching between Alberta and BC today and I got a little confused about the time…..or my phone did. In the morning the hiking was pretty slow–lots of mud and a little difficult to follow the trail-and I was listening to Dutch language podcasts which was taking half my concentration. We had lunch about 11:45 and then kept moving–the trail improved and went through some spectacular alpine meadows (some of which was easy cross country). The Meadows were lined on all sides by massive peaks. It’s amazing that there are no people up here and thousands a few miles south in Jasper. Right at the end of the day the Trail started going through an old burn zone and that’s where the trouble happened. At first there were just a few downed trees which were easy enough to climb over, but 0.8 miles before Colonel Creek Campground where we had planned to stay the route took a hard right off the main trail and into the burned woods. There were hundreds. Of downed. Trees. It was exhausting, and bruising, and incredibly frustrating, especially since there appeared to be a viable, clear route around the other side of Moose Lake-apparently the GDTA had “done some maintenance” in 2016 and 2017 and redirected the route around be the other side of the river to avoid a difficult ford of the Moose River. It took me over an hour to hike that last 0.8 miles and I found Adi, frustrated and at her wits’ end because she couldn’t find Colonel Creek Campground even though she spent 45 minutes looking for it. I set up my tent in the Trail, the only flat spot-and we both took a hit of the celebration whiskey I had packed out for Kakwa Lake. Sometimes necessity calls.
Day 32
Got moving today pretty late, about 8:30am. I couldn’t muster the motivation to get up early. For some reason that 0.8 miles of horrendous blowdowns just murdered me. Adi had been under the impression that we would cross the Moose River immediately so she hadn’t looked for the Colonel Creek campsite along the riverbank-sure enough, five minutes down the trail there it was. Oh well. We finally got out of the burn area after an hour and a half or so and started the series of 12 or 13 river fords for the day. The Moose River wasn’t too swift or deep and was really a beautiful river, so the morning was really quite pleasant. The Trail was better than I expected-I joked that that’s what bushwhacking through a burn area does to you-resets all your expectations. Eventually in the afternoon the Trail left the river bed and slowly started climbing up into the alpine to Moose Pass. The morning had been uncomfortably smoky but by the afternoon the sun was able to shine through and it was much less smoky. Got to the Pass about 4:30 and then made our way down towards the Smoky River where we would camp. There used to be a bridge over the Smoky River, but was damaged probably by ice flow in the winter/spring so was removed in 2014 so now thruhikers have to ford this substantially large river. We got to the river bank about 7:30pm-it certainly was quite high and fast, with milky white water from glacier sediment. Hopefully it will be lower in the morning. We made a comfortable camp on the bank in the massive floodplain- reminiscent of the Howse River floodplain. Tomorrow I’ll hike the 17 miles down the Berg Lake Trail to the Mount Robson Visitors Center to pick up my resupply package-Adi packed enough food out of Jasper to get her to the end, so she’ll go part of the way and relax for the rest of the day on one of the lakes.
Day 33
I woke up early, as it was getting light-about 5:30-and looked over at Adi, huddled against the cold in the fetal position with only about a silver dollar sized breathing hole in her sleeping bag hood-and decided to wait another 45 minutes to start getting up in earnest. When we finally did, we realized everything was covered in frost and our socks and shoes were frozen. It’s August! We got moving about 7:45 and forded the Smoky River with no problems-only knee deep, but unbelievably cold. Falling into that would create a hypothermia emergency quickly. We made out way to the beginning of the Berg Lake Trail and the Mount Robson Provincial Park boundary-the sun was shining and the air was surprisingly smoke free so we warmed up after awhile. Mount Robson with its massive glaciers and seracs was stunning in the morning light. I left Adi at the main Berg Lake Campground which she was happy to occupy for a day and a half. Heading down I quickly ran into Carl, another thruhiker, who was pretty much running down the trail-he had slightly misplanned his food and was totally out of food with 15 miles to hike. Luckily I had a little bit extra I was able to give him so he had a more comfortable walk down. We started running across tons of people-including Arisa, coming back up the trail! She had gone down to the Visitors Center the day before to get her resupply box and was headed to Adolphus Campground just outside the Park. We finally got down to the Visitors Center at 2:30 pm and grabbed our resupply boxes, but got flatly told that the Internet had been out for 5 days. This was a problem because I needed to communicate with my Prince George contacts about getting out of Kakwa Lake. So, we decided to hitchhike to the closest town which was Valemount. We got picked up in 10 minutes by this incredibly friendly Dutch couple who had their 3 year old daughter with them and were traveling the world for a year. We camped out in front of a coffee shop and used the Wifi-I found out the smoke and fires were so bad they were evacuating some towns west of Prince George. We stayed in an RV Campground which had Wifi and very hot showers. It is starting to smell like fall.
Day 34
I woke up at 6 and packed everything up…….then called The Netherlands for awhile. Then I went to Subway and ordered and ate a footlong meatball sub, which felt so bad-but good at the same time. It took 2 hitches to get back to Mount Robson Trailhead-an electrician who is also a climber who surprisingly picked me up in the company truck, and then a local farmer on her way back from the Valemount Farmers Market. She seemed sad and dissatisfied….but we had a nice talk during the ride. I started hiking just after 1 pm. The Berg Lake Trail is wide and well-graded, but it does go up 3000ish feet-not nice with a pack with 7 days worth of food and fuel. My patience for the same silly questions and assumptions from the throngs of people was wearing very thin. It’s time to wrap up this thruhike. I got to Berg Lake camp at about 7:30pm and decided to just camp there-at an absolutely spectacular campsite facing the lake and the massive glaciers on Mount Robson. It’s apparently difficult to get camping permits for this area, which you are supposed to do in advance…..but this is probably the last night on the GDT that I will camp illegally, making my percentage of camping illegally in the Parks on this trail 100%. Side note-I did actually buy permits for the national parks, I just was never at the sites I had reserved when I said I would be there. Lots of systems in Canada seem to operate on the assumption that everyone will politely follow the rules, which works great for me….bending the rules. Anyhow, at 7:30pm there were still 5-6 campsites open so I felt confident that I wasn’t taking someone’s spot. I slept really soundly. It’s getting colder at night.
Day 35
Five weeks on Trail. I got moving at 7:30am and just felt like absolute hell all morning-exhausted, hungry, bored, irritable. I wonder if I’m just getting tired. I’m glad I planned a week of rest in Utrecht although Martijn has been setting up lots of activities, he says. It was a sunny and clear day-I didn’t even think about smoke, which was pretty great. Hiked alone all day and didn’t see a soul after Mount Robson. The Trail stayed mostly in the woods all day. At 6:30 pm I got to a bridge across the Chown River-Dustin Lynx’s notes say to make sure the river is fordable at this point since you have to cross back over without a bridge about a mile upstream. In terms of glacial runoff this is about the worst time of day to cross a glacially fed river because it’s had all day to melt and the river is generally substantially higher. This river was NOT fordable at the bridge-waist deep for me, icy cold, and extremely fast, strong current. I went ahead and set up camp. I’ll try again in the morning.
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