The Appeals and Perils of Jasper

Day 26 (August 19, 2021)

We spent the day making the leisurely drive from Banff to Jasper on the Icefiled Parkway, making sure to take plenty of stops to see beautiful things along the way. And boy were there a lot of them. We were almost oversaturated by stunning views!

Some of our favorite stops were the Crowfoot Glacier:

Bow Lake:

Saskatchewan Crossing:

And Athabasca Falls:

At Athabasca Falls, you can actually walk through entire rock channels that used to be where the water flowed, but have now been abandoned by the falls in favor of other routes.

Upon arriving in Jasper, we went into town to get groceries and go to a cafe for coffee and blogging. Then we headed to our awesome campsite and enjoyed the evening looking out over this river:

Before going to sleep, we watched Episode 2 of Samin Nosrat’s Netflix series: Salt. (Yesterday we watched Episode 1: Fat). We’re both really enjoying it, and after both episodes have been feeling very inspired to explore cooking in a bigger way!

Day 27 (August 20, 2021)

We had toast with eggs and cottage cheese with blueberries for breakfast.

Then we headed out on the Valley of Five Lakes hike. It’s a very popular hike, so we knew we wouldn’t get any of the five lakes to ourselves. But we saw on the map that if we went a bit further there were two more lakes off of a side trail. Motivated by the possibility of more secluded lakes, we walked the extra mile or two, and did a little bushwacking to find them. Sadly… they looked like this: 

We still had no regrets about trying! But the five lakes that were actually part of the hike were certainly the highlights. 

   

Although a hike with five beautiful lakes does seem like the perfect lake jumping opportunity, we weren’t feeling it today. It did actually end up being mostly clear all day, and we didn’t get rained on at all! But it was also chilly, and being dry felt very nice.

We had a very relaxed afternoon and evening at our campsite. There was hackey sacking (including our greatest rally ever!), afternoon tea, ukelele and singing, good conversation, and a dinner of mac n cheese with onions and broccoli. We were also finally allowed to have a campfire, which was a welcome addition to our evening ambiance.

Day 28 (August 21, 2021)

We woke up to a completely clear blue sky — not a cloud in sight! The forecast predicted rain in the afternoon, but we didn’t even believe that!

We went on a 9 mile hike called Bald Hills, half of which was above treeline, with spectacular sweeping views of mountains, valleys, and lakes.

Our lunch spot was as good as it gets! And we had a little marmot friend at the peak with us.

We walked along the ridge, from viewpoint to viewpoint. We found another marmot sitting at a different peak, along with a very friendly chipmunk who came right up to us and put his paws on Nolan’s boot!

Indeed, clouds ended up covering the sky just after lunch, and on our way down we felt a couple of raindrops. We were very happy to make it to the car before the rain really came in. 

It ended up being Nolan’s favorite hike so far. And right up there with the Taylor Like hike for Monisha. 

For dinner, we cooked chicken with satay sauce over rice. This was Monisha’s favorite camping meal so far. Though it’s not like we have all that much variety to compete with. Breakfasts are granola and yogurt or eggs and toast. Lunches are pb&j or veggie/meat/cheese sandwiches or wraps. And about ¾ of our dinners are either mac n cheese with sautéed onions or ramen with broccoli and egg. We really like this food, but it is fun when we change it up.

Day 29 (August 22, 2021)

Today’s hike was called Hidden Valley, recommended by a man who was working at an outdoors store we visited in Jasper. He was extremely friendly and eager to help us try to find a solution to Monisha’s not waterproof hiking boots, as well as suggest cool hikes to go on!

Unfortunately, when we grabbed our backpack out of the car, our newly purchased bear spray tumbled out and broke in the parking lot! It only fell from about a foot off the ground, but it made a little hole in the bottom and all the contents started spraying out. We quickly moved it far away from the car and let the rest spray out into the ground. Monisha immediately got in the driver's seat and tried to drive the car away and avoid getting bear spray in the car. As she got in, she broke into a fit of coughing and had to run back out. In the end, she had to hold her breath in order to drive the car to the other side of the parking lot.

Oof. Two or three days after getting our bear spray, and it’s already gone…

Things turned up when we started the Hidden Valley hike. Very, very steeply up. In fact, it got so steep and rubble-y that at some point we realized we were not on the trail, and had instead veered off into a chute that goes straight up the side of the mountain. We were feeling like it was probably a bad idea to be going up this route — but by then, it was unclear that trying to go back down was a better or safer option.

When we reached the top we looked back down and were shocked that we had managed to climb straight up this:

Minutes after we made it to the top, it started to rain. Thankfully we spotted a couple standing at the summit and knew that if we could make it there we would find a safer trail down.

On the way back to the car we kept our eye out for where we had gone wrong. We found it at a place where the trail looked like it forked. We took the left path up the grassy hill, which was ended up being a serious error. Although, looking back we are both glad to have taken the more adventurous route (given we made it back alive!)

Day 30 (August 23, 2021)

We chose to spend this very rainy day almost entirely inside. 

First, we spent a looong morning hanging out in bed in Blue. 

We had breakfast in bed, read, and watched some of our show until 11am. We got to the laundromat (and stationary store) at 11:30 which we picked after seeing in reviews that it has great wifi. Perfect place to blog! Frustratingly, their wifi was apparently not working well enough to share. We’ve been pretty surprised at how hard it is to get wifi. We’ve been to quite a number of cafes, and each has had no wifi or terribly slow wifi. It was still a good place to hang out. And it was Monisha’s first laundromat experience.

We also found some more fuel, went on successful adventure (with assistance from a local fireman) to find a place to dispense of our empty fuel canisters, and topped up on groceries.

In the afternoon we visited the Spice Joint Jamaican Cafe. Still no wifi!

In the evening we chilllled at the campsite and played some innovation in the rain shelter. Appetizers were crackers with cheese and tomatoes with olive oil and tuscan herb salt.

We also spotted a very cute deer roaming around our site.

After several days of adventuring and hiking, it was kind of nice to end our stay in Jasper with a day of relaxing.

However, it feels more appropriate to end this post without one more amazing picture from the top of Bald Hills!

We're currently writing this in Missoula after several wonderful days in Glacier National Park. Stay tuned for a post about our Glacier adventures!