Evan Hunter's Round The World Diary

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Mount Robson Hike Day 1 - Jasper to Berg Lake

The Greyhound busses to Mount Robson were not at extra convenient times - 2am, 4am, noon, 6pm. I decided to catch the one at noon (12:15), and after a quick, early breakfast, I packed my gear in hiking mode, and caught the 9:30 shuttle bus to town.
I retrieved my diary from the internet place, and used the net for a while longer. I bought some last minute groceries, grabbed an early lunch, then went to the train/bus station, and boarded the bus after waiting a while.
For much of the trip it rained, although there were still reasonable views of rugged mountains, forests and rivers along the way. Mount Robson Provincial Park is quite big - we were driving in it 40 minutes before my stop at the visitors centre. The time zone change meant that I arrived only about 10 minutes after setting out despite a 1 hour 10 minute journey.
It was sprinkling a little rain when I arrived at the visitors centre. I payed for two nights at Berg Lake, and bought a map. I was told that I should watch a video about the walk, but their computer was missing, so couldn´t play the video.
After stashing my excess, non-hiking gear with the visitors centre, I attempted to quickly patch up a corner of my pack which was allowing the frame strut to come out, and make the pack unbalanced. I then set out on the hike. It was about 1:20pm, and I had to hike 23km, so I figured I couldn't really afford to muck around.
The first two kilometres were on a road to the trailhead.
The trail began with a bridge over the Robson river, which was a turbulent fast flowing, glacial green, rocky river. The next 5km of the trail was on a wide dirt path designed for a vehicle, and paralleled the river upstream through lush, wet rainforest. It started raining fairly heavilly on this section, so I stopped to put on my rain gear. Later I stopped again to take off my coat when the rain ceased, and to get water from the river (I'd forgotten at the visitors centre).
Crossing the river again, I came to Kinney Lake, which was a blue green glacial lake. Till now, I had been getting glimpses of what I assumed was Mt Robson ' a huge rocky, snowy mountain, with at least half missing in the thick, low cloud. The mountain summit was now also hidden by a huge set of cliffs lining the valley I was in - the Valley of 1000 Waterfalls.
The track now undulated as it traversed the lake shore to the campground. There were several creeks on the far side of the valley which formed white ribbons down the side of the mountains for hundreds of metres through the forest.
After some more undulation, the trail crossed the Robson river again in three parts on an alluvial plain, which had excellent views of the valley, as it was vegetation free. Here, the first climb began. It had some switchbacks, so was not too steep, but was still tiring. After the trail flattened out, I could see that the river was now in a gorge, however, it soon rose out of the gorge and I crossed it on a swing bridge to reach the Whitehorn Campground. Shortly after Whitehorn, the track yet again crossed the river, where a powerful waterfall was partially visible.
Now the real climb began, and no punches were held - it was steep - too steep to keep a reasonable pace, I ground up the mountain very slowly. Fortunately my water was now ready for drinking.
Shortly I came to White falls, and realised that the falls I'd seen earlier were insignificant in comparison. These were very impressive, but it was hard to get an unobstructed view of them. The noise was a very loud roar from the tonnes of watter rushing over the falls.
Still climbing steeply, the trail went through the forest before reaching a cliff overlooking "Falls of the Pool". These falls were in two parts, with a pool in the middle. It was a bit easier to get a good view of these falls. Again the roar of the falls was quite loud.
From here, the trail paralleled a canyon, with the sound of roaring water fairly constant. I could see Emperor Falls in the distance, and they were fairly impressive, even from that distance, as the falling water hit a rock outcrop and was fanned out, kind of like a horses tail. It was also apparent that the canyon was rather weird - the river was not flowing at the bottom, but on a shelf high up on the far side of the canyon. I'd never seen anything like it.
Soon I reached the Emperor Falls lookout track, then climbed one last steep part to attain the alpine plateau which Berg Lake lies on.
The Robson river changed back to a fairly calm, but swift river as it passed the Emperor falls campsite. The trail contoured now along the river on an enormous scree slope, whic had had heaps of trail building done on it, to make a kind of dry stone retaining wall. I was getting a bit tired by now, but the views that were appearing were making it worthwhile - I could see the Myst glacier, which was an incredibly steep jagged jumble of an icefall down the side of the mountain. I could stil not see the upper part of the mountain, but got occasional glimpses through the cloud.
The track moved onto the wide, flat, treeless alluvial plain of the river, and soon came to Marmot campsite.
Here Berg Lake, and the Berg glacier came into view. The lake was the usual beautiful jewel colour of glacial lakes, and the glacier was spectacular as it terminated in the lake, and was a clean white-blue epitomy of a glacier.
Finally I reached Berg Lake campsite. There was a Canadian couple there already. After setting up my tent, I had dinner in the beautiful log cabin cooking shelter, and watched the cloud swirl around the mountain as the sun set, before going to bed.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Mount Robson Hike Day 2 - Hargreaves Lake, Mumm Basin Loop

I woke up in the early morning and realised it was snowing on my tent, and after a little longer, I realised it had been snowing a lot - my tent was pressing in on me a bit. After pushing the snow off the tent, looked outside, to find that there were big fat snow flakes falling heavily. I went back to sleep for a while, since it would be no good for hiking in the snow.
Later in the morning, I got up, and raced to the day shelter hut, to have breakfast out of the snow. Outside, it was snowing so heavily that I couldn´t even see the lake (about 50m away), and there was a covering of 5-10cm on the ground, and all over the trees. Watching the trees outside, I soon realised that the connifers are good at shedding the snow on them without breaking.
I had breakfast, then was watching the snow outside. After a while, a group of people appeared out of the snow, from toward Robson Pass and came into the cabin. I soon found that it was a school group of young children. The peace of the hut was immediately shattered, as even when just talking to each other normally, they were nearly yelling, as most kids do. Soon the other two thirds of the group turned up, so that there were about 15 kids, and about 5 adults, plus me. The school group had been camped at Mumm Basin Campsite, but had come to the hut to get out of the snow and get warm.
I sat in the hut listening to my mp3 player, writing my diary, eating and drinking, whilst the proceeded to try to get dry, warm and have some food very noisily.
During the morning, the snow slowly eased, then stopped. The lake, then the Berg glacier re-appeared, but it was now raining slightly on and off, and the sky looked very dark and stormy.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Mount Robson Hike Day 3 - Berg Lake to Robson Glacier then Out

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Friday, June 17, 2005

Mount Robson to Kamloops

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Saturday, June 18, 2005

Kamloops to Prince George

The bus to Prince George

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