Next Stop, Lake Louise

11^thSeptember 2019

Today we anticipate a bit of bushwalking, as we travel through the Revelstoke, Glacier and Yoho National Parks. Once again, the skies suggest more unsettled weather, but hopefully it will only be light rain.

After breakfast at our motel, we set out with a few walks already preplanned. Our first opportunity is the Skunk Cabbage Trail, which is a boardwalk loop through wetlands. At around 30 kms from Revelstoke, we see the turnoff and pull in. There is only one other car there, but it is relatively early, only 8.40 am.

Still in the Revelstoke National Park and parking just near a picnic area you are immediately confronted by the fast flowing water of the Illecillawaet River. The trail is advertised is a boardwalk loop of around 1.3km through wetlands. Sadly the loop is closed due to repairs needed on part of the boardwalk, but you do not discover this until the loop is about 75% completed you then have to backtrack the way you came. Nevertheless it held some interest, particularly if you are into birdwatching. Otherwise the park area around the entrance beside the river, and the walk through the dense forest to get to the boardwalk made it worthwhile.

It looks promising at the start

The trail to the boardwalk winds through a lush forest

And the you reach to boardwalk

Towards the end you find the loop is closed and have to retrace your steps

Next on our agenda, and not a lot further down the road was the Giant Cedars Trail. A shorter boardwalk through old growth forests of Cedar and Hemlock, a little steep at the start, but very scenic and well worth spending the 30 minutes or so to explore this trail.

Soon after, we entered the Glacier National Park (at this stage we are still able to use the National Park Pass we purchased yesterday as they are valid for 24 hours). A few of the trails appeared to be offering what we had seen before in Revelstoke, but one stood out. It is called The Loop Brook Trail. It is located in Rogers Pass ( very spectacular in its own way), and follows the path of one of the most difficult railway track builds in this harsh landscape. In order to reduce the grade of climb for trains in the late 1880’s, a very clever engineer, James Ross,, came up with a concept of building some loops to expend the travel distance so that trains could cover the severe grade by breaking it down into loops, just like switchbacks on a road.

This walk guides you along the remains of the two loops that we built on massive stone pillars across valleys and rivers to achieve this aim. For much of the walk, you walk along the old railway track.

The river that had to be crossed

Stone pillars built to replace the original timber trestles that were unable to withstand the punishing conditions (even the stone pillars were occasionally knocked over by avalanches

Many of the pillars (without the rail) still survive

Remains of the rail track

Remaining Pillars of the second loop

An Avalanche bowled this one over

By now it is close to lunch time, and we need fuel. Our next stop is the town of Golden where both needs can be satisfied (we hope). Getting fuel was expensive, but easy. Finding food other than the myriad of fast food restaurants was more challenging. We did manage to find a local restaurant in the back streets, had and adequate meal, and enjoyed the 80’s décor.

Onward now to our final destination for the day, Lake Louise, sadly we are plagued by road works including one period where traffic in both directions was held up for around 20 minutes, whilst they carried out blasting to widen the road. 

Finally we approach our destination, about an hour later than expected and we hadn’t really taken into account the one hour time difference we had lost in the process. As we approached Lake Louise, it became clear that the town was pretty busy, as they had all of these people in Hi Vis vests directing traffic. We attempted to the turn into the street where our motel was, but were directed to keep going ahead. Roads were blocked, there were witches hats everywhere blocking access to side streets, and it became clear that the only option you had was to go to the lake. We dutifully continued on, as it was only 3.30pm and it looks like this place gets pretty busy, so why not see the lake now rather than in the morning.

As we approach Lake Louise it is also clear that there is not parking and traffic is being diverted back in the direction we came to an overflow carpark, from which a shuttle bus will take you to the Lake. We figure if we have to go through all of this, then we will do it tomorrow.

There is another lake we want to see, Lake Moraine, and signs tell us we can continue back down the road we came in on to get access to Lake Moraine road (even though it was closed on our way up because the carpark was full). As we are approaching the turnoff to Lake Moraine it appears the road is still closed so it looks like we are headed back to our motel. When we were within 2 car lengths of the closed road, the barrier is removed and we are free to drive to Lake Moraine.

How lucky can you be. The trip to Lake Moraine is around 13kmn at 50 km per hour. Once there, we manage to get a carpark and can walk around the lake in relative peace.

It is a stunning place and the weather more or less holds off for us with patches of rain interrupted by sunny patches, certainly enough for an enjoyable walk and some great photos.

There are a lot of people around but it is not too busy

Simply stunning

It was 5.30pm by the time we checked in to our motel. By now the witches hats closing off our access road had disappeared and traffic flows were back to normal. Tomorrow morning we have to develop a strategy to visit Lake Louise. From the advice we have been given by reception, you either drive there before 7am, or end up in the overflow carpark and catch the shuttle bus. I suspect we will do the latter.