Daily Miles: 14
Total Miles: 278
We decided we would sleep in today since we are on a relaxed pace until Lake Louise. We got up around 7:15am and were on the trail just after 8am. It had rained overnight, but the rain was over by the morning. The grey clouds still lingered, but luckily no rain.
The trail, however, was quite slick from the rain. If was pretty muddy in some sections, and you really had to watch out for the slippery wet roots in the trail. We managed to keep our feet fairly dry, since the trails are well maintained and not overgrown with wet shrubs (at least for the morning).
We took a lot of breaks during the day and slowly made our way along. We had expected to see a lot more people on the trail than we did today…probably less than 20.
In the afternoon, the valley we had been walking through started to open up to great views of the rock walls on either side. We had a gradual climb to Pulsatilla Pass, which was really beautiful. When we got to the top and looked over the other side, it was an amazing view with a green valley and alpine lake below. The dark blue color of Wildflower Lake was stunning. The dark grey clouds overhead gave it a really dramatic look.
We took a break at the pass and then headed down. Once we passed the lake, the lovely, maintained trail of Banff NP seemed to disappear and was replaced with a routine, run of the mill, unmaintained and overgrown trail. It seems the trail crews haven’t been out here in awhile, as there were a lot of downed trees across the trail and shrubs growing into the trail. Seems that we have been spoiled by our last five days in Banff NP.
We had planned to camp at a site about 3.5 miles ahead, but when we got to this campground (Wildflower Creek), the trees were so perfect for hammocking, that we decided to stop here for the day. We arrived at camp around 5pm, so we get a nice relaxing evening to look forward to… and the bugs aren’t even too bad here! Double bonus.
Questions or thoughts on this article? Please leave them below: