Larch Madness

We’ve left Canmore and are now en route to Vancouver, but before departing we snuck in one more hike that proved to be one of the best we’ve done. There are these trees up here called “larches” that are like pine trees except that they turn yellow in the autumn, the way deciduous trees do. We’d deliberately waited to do the Larch Valley hike until now, both because this is the season that the trees are at their most spectacular and because Parks Canada had just announced that they were lifting their requirement that hikers travel in groups of four now that bear season is coming to an end.

So we drove down to Lake Moraine, which is pretty spectacular in its own right. In fact its image used to grace one side of the Canadian twenty-dollar bill. After taking a few pictures made our way over to the trailhead, where we were greeted with the following sign:

Apparently there had been some bear sightings that very morning, and so Parks Canada made a last-minute decision to reinstate the travel restriction. At the height of the season, it would be no problem to wait at the trailhead until another party of two showed up, but now there were not nearly so many hikers. We waited for a few minutes and then resigned ourselves to doing a much crappier hike.

Just as we were starting down the new trail, we heard someone calling after us. “Are you wanting to do that hike?” asked a fit-looking forty-something in good but heavily accented English.

After exchanging a quick glance, we agreed to take him up on his offer to travel together. He, his wife, Emily, and myself introduced ourselves as we started up the trail. It turned out that his name was also Andrew, his wife’s name was Elka (I may well be spelling that wrong), and they were from Germany.

The trail and scenery weren’t much to speak of for the first hour or so, mostly just switchbacks up through a (green) pine forest. Then it leveled off as it emerged into a meadow surrounded by golden larches, with views of taller peaks beyond them:

 

Fortunately our new friends had sandwiches with them as well, so we stopped to eat lunch and discuss our next move. From where we were, the trail continued without much elevation gain for a few hundred feet, arriving at a mountain lake. Beyond that, a series of narrow, snowy switchbacks led up to Sentinel Pass. It was only about a mile further, but it gained more than 1000 feet in elevation, meaning it would be a steep, steady climb. The white line that zig-zags up the cliff behind the lake in the picture is the trail:

Emily and I were game, and it seemed like Andrew was eager to continue but that Elka was more hesitant. She agreed to go a short way up and see how it felt. Of course once the inertia was in our favor she kept going, and we ended up reaching the pass with less effort than we’d expected. I think it worked out well for Andrew that they’d had to tag along with us, because if it were just his wife and him, they probably wouldn’t have ended up going. It was well worth the climb, though, because we got magnificent views both back into Larch Valley and forwards into another valley on the other side of the pass. This first picture is Larch Valley from Sentinel Pass:

A short spur trail climbed another few hundred feet from the pass to a higher vantage point. Andrew scurried up there quickly, but Elka remained below. Her English was less good than her husband’s, so she hadn’t said nearly as much up to this point. Shaking her head, she told us, “Always he must be at the highest place.

Soon I headed up the spur as well, passing German Andrew as he descended. You can see me standing up there in the upper right hand corner of this picture:

Apparently while I was up there Andrew told the ladies that he was naming the observation point “Two Andrews Peak”.

The trail actually continued over the pass and down into the next valley, but to do that we would have needed to arrange a ride from the far end of the trail. He descended back the way we came and had a beer with our new friends back at the lodge. Then they went on their way, and we stuck around to take a few more pictures of Lake Moraine:

It’s hard to leave the mountains when they are at their most beautiful, but the cold is settling in quickly, and the snow will start falling any day (in Canmore- obviously there’s already snow up in the mountains). Vancouver should be exciting in its own right, and I’m expecting some sunshine and warmer temperatures in Cannes!