8-1-2015
Parker Ridge – Banff NP, Alberta

Trying to make the best of yesterday’s bad situation, I use my newfound time today to regroup and to tackle the shortest hike on my “list of hikes.”  Doing this is going to give me more time in Calgary on Monday, which is a good thing as I’m really planning to live it up when I get there.

I start the day in the laziest fashion, sleeping in well past 9 am (by far the latest I’ve gotten up on this trip), and taking in a huge breakfast of sausage, potatoes, and eggs.  It’s weird; even though I eat until I’m completely stuffed, my body still feels a sort of emptiness and hunger.  I think yesterday just took that big of a hit out of me. Like I said in my previous blog entry, that was the steepest, most punishing hike that I’ve tackled in my life.  I just was not prepared for that kind of calorie outtake.  Even with the breakfast, my body’s still in calorie deficit.

After finishing breakfast and checking out of my motel, I leave Golden on the TC-1 and head into Banff NP, thus marking my exodus from British Columbia and entry into Alberta.  From there, I turn north on the 93, working my way to the border between Banff and Jasper National Parks.  My destination is Parker Ridge, a very short five kilometer hike that takes you to an overlook of Saskatchewan Glacier.  The second I start heading north, it’s all jaw-dropping titans of mountains, covered in glaciers, and with pristine glacial melt teal blue lakes below.  Really stunning.  I didn’t stop to take any photos during the drive, but you can guarantee that I made the entire drive with jaw dropped.

The trip up to Parker Ridge ticked off a series of boxes in my life. Most obvious, the trip marks my first sighting of a real glacier.  Not the cute things on the sides of mountains that I’ve been writing about for the past few days, but a literal river of ice carving down mountains and pushing through the valley below.  Also, while I know my friend Evan who lives in the second northern most town in Alaska is going to laugh at this, the trip to Parker Ridge marks the furthest North I have ever travelled in life.  Finally, and less exciting, the trip to Parker Ridge marks my first experience with the tourist crowds of Banff.

They start swarming like flies around the time I reach Bow Lake – not hiking into anything, walking along the streets with selfie sticks, designer jeans and soda pop.  People who are somehow in this glorious, majesty-of-God place, and yet not experiencing or taking in a piece of it.  A bighorn sheep walks close to the road, and it is immediately trapped with thirty cameras in its face.  It’s really pathetic.

Parker Ridge being one of the easier hikes in the park (and leading to a beautiful place), it too proves to be full of tourists.  During the approximate 1.7 miles to the top, I overhear a man complaining of a stock deal gone bad.  Yet, yesterday all I heard for miles was complete silence.  I see a teenage girl scream and run from a single fly buzzing nearby.  Yet, yesterday blood was trickling down my arms from the sheer number of flies which I could not escape.  I notice a kid that is more absorbed in an iPhone app than the stunning views around him.  Yet, yesterday I experienced a rock wall so tall and overwhelming that it could not be captured with my camera’s lens.  The lack of respect these people had for the world around them made me actually start to long for the sufferfest of yesterday.  Sure I failed to reach my final destination and camp overnight, but I had experienced something that day: pain and suffering; and it gave me a powerful insight into the world around me that these people lacked.

If the people ruined my ascent, the trail wasn’t helping much either.  Yesterday, I was traversing ledges with steep drop-offs, a trail that often got buried and lost in a forest of lupines, and dealing with the sheer paranoia of walking alone through a place that you know is prime grizzly bear habitat.  Today, a wide, well-defined (hell, stair laden) trail ascended lazily for a couple kilometers through fields of wildflowers, lichens, and tundra grass before plopping its travelers off at the destination.  To call this “hiking” is blasphemy.

In spite of all of this, at some point before reaching the top of the ridge, I decided that I was going to try to avoid descending completely into cynicism, and instead to start viewing this hike with a level head.  “Maybe these people aren’t so bad,” I think to myself as I watch an elderly couple making their way across the ridge.

“In fact, maybe they aren’t flooding this trail solely because its the easiest trail in the park, but rather because of the incredible beauty of this place,” I think to myself as the glacier and nearby cascading waterfall finally unfold before my eyes.

“I mean, this is a glacier!  A glacier!  How many people back home have ever seen anything like this in their life?  Anything this powerful?  Oh my God!”

Eventually, I reach a point on the trail that is less traveled, probably because it has a lot of slick gravel leading down to a precipice.  But the view there beats all other views on the hike.  I sit there and drink some water, at peace and undisturbed for a good 10 minutes before a couple comes upon me.  I ask if they wouldn’t mind taking a picture with me in it.  They oblige, and so there exists what is probably the only picture I have of myself so far on my journey (however, I’m pretty sure there are two European girls somewhere in Canada with several pictures of me from our time on Abbot Ridge 😀 ).

After taking my picture, I return the favor and take a picture of them on the ledge.  From there, we start talking and I learn that they are up here from Detroit – the first Americans that I meet in Canada.  I tell them a bit about myself and what I do for a living, and then they tell me about their son who went into intellectual property law and commutes back and forth between San Francisco and Detroit.  They were good, salt of the earth people.  I’m glad I bumped into them.

I made my way back down the trail post haste.  From there, I drove back down the 93 to Lake Louise, where there are again throngs of tourists everywhere.  Rather than see the lake and face the crowds (I’ll do that tomorrow), I retreat to my campground and set up camp.  I prepare my MRE for dinner, the same MRE that wasn’t going to be enough to get me to Numa Creek and back yesterday, but which now is quite enough.  And now, as I sit here writing this and thinking back on my past 48 hours, a kind of peace settles over me, and I’m very happy with the way things have turned out.

Cheers,

Rob