Canada (24 May – 6 June)

I’m giving the people (nan and pop) what they want, here’s a fortnightly update! 🙂 you. are. welcome.

As Justin mentioned we stayed in Jasper National Park for a couple of days. What a beautiful place! The weather wasn’t super great – clouds came and went and it was a bit rainy at times.

Fri 24 May – it was a bit drizzly so we decided to do the Maligne Canyon, a short walk where the view would still be visible. We forgot our bear spray :S

Sat 25 May – We hiked up Mount Whistlers just outside of the town of Jasper. It was a 9km (1000m vertical) hike up to the Sky Tram. We remembered our bear spray for this one (high five!). It started pretty easy and then got a little trickier when we got to the snow. Justin was also in shorts.. We followed the tracks of the people in front of us most of the way. I am very grateful Justin was leading the way and treaded the path in more for me :). It then got really deep and we lost the trail so just scrambled straight up! 🙂 It was really beautiful at the top but the sky wasn’t very clear and it was cold so we didn’t hang around for too long.

Justin is very into the basketball so we went to the pub for dinner to watch the Raptors play in the 6th series game against Milwaukee. It was a very intense game with the Raptors down by 15 with 3 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter. And only 5 down at 3 quarter time. Justin was super nervous (see photo below). Super stoked they won! Which means they are eastern conference champions and have made it to the final. This is the first time they have ever made it into the final! Fingers crossed they win:)

Sun 26 May – We drove about an hour east of the town to do the Sulfur Skyline Trail. This was an 8km return hike with about 700m elevation gain to the top of a mountain. The weather was much better today. yay! The hike was a pretty easy out and took about 3 hours. The view from the top was beautiful! Definitely a hike where the quality of view was worth the amount of effort put into the walk.

We then drove on to Edmonton and slept at Walmart! – all class. What a great way to spend the night before an interview.

Mon 27 May – Justin got ready in the van for his interview. It went pretty well except the company doesn’t have the work on at the moment to hire him. They took us out for a Chinese lunch after so that was a bonus. We don’t think we want to live here anyway so we weren’t too upset, it is too far from the mountains.

We then drove to a park for a walk and then drove south towards Calgary to Nick Taits place. He is Justin’s mate from Oaklands who is marrying a Canadian in August (basically the reason for why we moved to Canada). The convo pretty much went:

• J – hey Elle want to go to Nick Taits wedding next year in Canada
• E – yeah why not, we should make a holiday of it
• J – or we could move there
• E – yeah good idea
• J – OK

Anyway they were super lovely and cooked us dinner and gave us a bed 🙂

Tue 28 May – Dave and Jana who we met in Peru on the Salkantay Trek are now in Canada and doing a three week road trip so we organised to do a hike with them in the Rockies. We headed back west into the Rockies, drove north up through the Icefields Parkway (which was stunning!), back through Jasper to meet them at Mount Robson Provincial Park in BC. We saw one more black bear eating on the side of the road. All the bears we have seen seem pretty chill so far haha. We planned on doing the Berg Lake Trail and spending 3 nights out there leaving the next day.

On the way to the campsite we saw 2 more bears. This time running across the road in front of us! Much bigger than the other black bears but still not grizzlies.

We had both bought a couple of bottles of wine to bring on the trek but they didn’t even last the night. Four bottles were finished and Jana and I definitely only had a few glasses each. Let’s say both Justin and Dave had headaches the next day. The only bonus was less weight to carry on the hike!

Wed 29 May – We slowly got ready in the morning and left around 10am on the hike. We walked a total of 16km to the Emperor Falls campground. The views along the way were beautiful. First we passed Lake Kinney, then walked through the Valley of Thousand Falls to the base of the steep ascent. They said we went up around 600 m over the last 4km. There were three or so waterfalls along the way. The campground was on the side of the lake with the huge Mount Robson as a back drop. Amazing place to spend the night! There was still snow around the campsite but enough space for our tents.

The hike up was pretty tough but at least we will eat away a lot of the weight over the next few days 🙂

Jana and Dave still call Justin “Pinot” but have all thought about calling him Peanut (because he bought a kilo of peanut butter on the trek) or the Cookie Monster (because he ate most of the cookies).

Thur 30 May – Since we did the hardest part on the first day we just had to walk another 4-5km to the Berg Lake Campground. The view of the lake and the backdrop of the glacier and mountains was insane. The lake is in the defrosting stage which has made a beautiful pattern across the top of the lake. I am hoping it will defrost further over the next few days:)

Here we set up camp and chilled out for a bit. Justin decided to have a wash in the frozen lake. Brrrrr! He’s crazy.

Without the weight of our packs we did a 6km loop up to Hargreaves Lake and down past Taboggan Falls. From the lake were amazing views of the Berg Lake, Berg Glacier and Mount Robson. The second half of the loop through the snow was pretty tough (and resulted in a small snow fight) but we made it back 🙂

This evening we taught Dave and Jana how to play a card game called Tamul (which were learnt off Steph on the Santa Cruz Trek). Let’s just say it got competitive pretty quickly!

Fri 31 May – Very chill day as we found out many of the day hikes from here are closed due to the season and also avalanches. But it’s not a bad place to hang out do we weren’t too upset. There was a lot of debate as to if we should hike down half way and then send someone down to get us wine and cheese but we decided to stay because a group of school kids was headed to the camp at the half way point.

We did a small walk to Robson Pass and then Dave and Justin went to see how far they could get up a mountain while Jana and I did some reading and relaxing 🙂

Sat 1 June – We left bright and early to walk all the way down so we would have time to shower and set up camp before the next Raptors game. Justin was super excited because he found out off another hiker that they had one the first game played two nights ago. The hike down was 20 or so km and took us about 4 hrs 40 mins. Fast.

On the way back to Jasper we pulled over to organise which camp site to go to and a grizzly bear was on the other side of the road! so crazy! these things a BIG! a car had pulled over and the passengers actually got out of the car! They be crazy! Have they not heard how aggressive these things can be? nuts! Anyway, this one actually seemed pretty chill and was just eating grass. But we still stayed inside our car – we are smart.

We found a camp and went to a shower cafe we found in town. When Justin googled the Raptors game and it turns out it wasn’t on until the next day…. we rushed for nothing. Thanks Justin! All good, we still went to the pub for dinner, tried to watch the hockey but it was a bit boring so went back to the campsite and played Tamul.

Since getting the van we discovered we have inherited quite a bit of camping gear from the previous owners. What a bonus! Some of the more useful items (:S) include a tiny axe and a canopy with only a few small holes in it.

Sun 2 June – We had a very chill day, did some washing, watched some movies and sat by the crystal clear blue lakes. That evening we actually got to watch the Raptors. But they lost 😦 Score tally is 1-1 of a 7 game series.

Mon 3 June – Another chill day. Justin had a call with WSP in the morning and was offered a job in Vancouver – at this point this seems like out best option so he took it! Vancouver here we come! Just waiting for the contract to be sent through before we celebrate too much. We spent the rest of the day at the library and then more chilling and movie watching 🙂

Tue 4 June – We left Jasper and drove towards Vancouver. We saw another bear! and another moose, which was cool because we hadn’t seen them in a while. They look a bit like a cartoon character. We took plenty of breaks for naps and watched some episodes of The Office. We made it as far as Kamloops, where we had dinner in the park and then drove to a lookout overlooking the lake to sleep. Very pretty. Everything seemed to be falling into place….

Wed 5 June – Until – uh ohh! The car is broken. Dang. Looks like we are stuck in Kamloops for a while longer. Basically, we could get it started if we held the accelerator down but once you took the foot off the accelerator it would stall instead of idling. After sorting out our road side assistance and getting a tow to a mechanic we waited to hear the verdict, a nervous day ahead!

Around 1pm Justin got a call and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. This made Justin nervous. I however, had done some googling of the symptoms and I thought the vents or something just needed a clean because they were restricting the oxygen to the motor. At 4pm we got a call and I was right! Big Bertha was good to go!

We stayed in Kamloops for the Raptors game 3 – and they won! wewww! The score is now 2-1 the Raptors way, fingers crossed they can get another 2 wins and win the series 🙂

Thur 6 June – Not a super eventful day. We drove towards Vancouver because we planned on getting there the next day so we could start inspecting some properties! 🙂 A very pretty drive, but once we are settled we definitely plan on making or way back this way to do some of the trails 🙂

More photos from this part of our trip are here.