Alberta Bound

The second most important thing we did in Edmonton was getting all our ski’s and ski gear out of the travel trailer (Canadian for caravan) and into our friends basement and even more of our stuff out of their basement and into the hands of other friends and St Vinnie’s.

The very most important thing (according to Jenny) was a replacement point and shoot digital camera. We got a very small Canon with 4X zoom, a sort-of wide angle lens and anti-shake technology. Much nicer than the Pentax, but that’s no surprise the way technology is changing.

We extended our stay to watch a double header FIFA U20 World Cup soccer game at the stadium used for the Commonwealth Games in the 1980’s. The first game was Canada vs Austria, and the second, Chile vs somebody else.

Soccer is definitely a better game to watch live than on TV, mainly because you can see more of the preparation going on off the ball. However, there was about 10 – 15 seconds of excitement per 15 – 20 minutes of play. Curling for instance rates much higher in the excitement stakes.

Although it is the ‘world game’ I can’t see soccer ever being embraced where there is professional contact football or sports such as ice hockey. Until FIFA can get these elite athletes acting like men instead of Elton John having a bad-hair day, I can’t see Ozzies/Kiwis/Canucks/Yanks being willing to embrace such theatrics. Half the Austrian team (in particular) should get on steroids and join pro-wrestling.

Anyway, Canada lost (but only just), and being thoroughly sick of the ‘gamesmanship’, we left before the second game started. So much for my first and last elite soccer experience. Note also my use of the word ‘soccer’ for the footsie game – I won’t denigrate real footballers again by calling that other game anything but soccer from now on.

The Rockies were waiting so off to the Iceline Trail just over the BC border from Lake Louise. It’s a 21 km long day walk and the first half was up hill and also the most scenic. Accordingly, the first 10 km took 5 hours and the next 11 took 2.5. The scenery was fantastic, and being summer in Alberta, we walked over (and occasionally through) snow for about 2 hours. A great walk – definitely in our Top 10. Despite some excellent scenery on our northern loop, nowhere was as scenic or had as many good walking trails as the Canadian Rockies.

After a rest day due to a combination of tiredness and cloud cover, we then did three day trips – Helen Lake, Sentinel Pass and Odaray Grand View. Although they were only about 12 km each, they all included a vertical climb of 500 – 750 m. Sentinal Pass is the highest maintained walking trail in the Rockies at 2611 m. The amazing thing was that we passed a (very) old lady on the way up however she got to the top an embarrassingly short time after us. She didn’t specifically say her age, but mentioned she had been married for 59 years – do the math! The walks were all very good, with great views, particularly on the higher sections.

So, although about 60 km in 6 days mightn’t seem like a lot of kilometres, once the vertical climb and the need to place each footstep for at least half of each walk, had us looking forward to our rest day on Thursday. Friday we begin the 4 day Mt Assiniboine walk . . .

After a short but great helicopter ride we set up camp (with great difficulty due to hordes of mosquitos) and did a short walk around glacier-fed Lake Magog, at the base of Mt Assiniboine. The next day was a 14 km trip up Nub Peak (2743 m via the Nublet and the Niblet!), from which we got our best views ever of the Rockie Mountains. It was hot (30+), bright sunshine and very clear air – I reckon we had 100 km visibility. It was soooo hot and sweaty we had a (very) quick dip in Lake Magog! Even though we thought it was cold, one young lady was doing laps!!! I think she was a bit crazy though, as we had earlier seen her running up a mountain (wearing not very much very well) with a particularly fetching strap-on bear mace container – the must-have fashion accessory for every young mountain woman.

Having had enough of the mosquitos – we had been walking 2.5 km each way to have breakfast and supper (Canadian for dinner) in a hut – we decided to walk out in one day instead of two. Although it was 31 km, there was only one small pass at the start and the end and the rest was pretty flat. Not great walking compared to the previous few days, but not too bad.

We (ie Ian is sick of being the packhorse and Jen’s knees are giving out) have slowly been embracing a lightweight/minimalist camping philosophy and now that Jen lets Ian be the official ‘backpack Nazi’ they are now a manageable weight for independent multi-day trips – Jen’s was 8 kg at the start and Ian’s 17. Amazingly, if you take out the weight of water and the packs themselves, we had less than 15 kg of gear for 4 days.

Jen’s 10 day old Canon camera is now half worn-out after taking more than 400 photos . . . .

End of the Northern Loop

After a day recovering from our Dalton adventure, we paid a quick visit to the Alaska University Large Mammal research station close to Fairbanks to check out musk ox and caribou up close. We took a short tour with a uni student earning some summer dollars and found out more about musk ox then we ever needed to know. Very much worth the time and minimal cost.

After a total of five nights and warm sunny days in Fairbanks it was back down the highway to Tok and up to Dawson City. This road is called the Top of the World Highway and runs about for 250 km along rounded ridge tops. It was mostly good gravel and altogether a very nice drive. Highly recommended.

After enjoying the Alaskan Arctic circle trip so much, we decided to do it all again in Canada. So it was up the Dempster Highway towards Inuvik for us. We spent the first night at a campground called Engineer Creek that had the worst mosquitos I have ever seen. Not only were there lots of them, but they were active 24 hours a day. They were so bad I hooked up the trailer the next day wearing shoes, trousers, jumper, gloves, beanie and lots of DEET. It made Merle look good.

Anyway, it rained all night and all the way to the Arctic Circle the next morning. We didn’t think much of driving through thick cloud on a skating rink, so after a few quick photos it was back to the van.

From Dawson City it was a long, wet, uneventful trip south-west to Whitehorse and Dawson Creek. The only thing of note at Whitehorse was that we woke up at 2.00 AM and – believe it or not – it was dark (well, sort of at least). We worked out it had been just over four weeks since it had been dark. Hard to believe after a lifetime in the tropics.

The next night was spent at Grand Cache, a small town in Alberta with a coal mine, forestry and oil and gas industries built on a ridge within a few miles of the Rocky Mountains. Very scenic, lots of hiking and skiing and would be a great spot to live for a while.

We are currently in Edmonton to take some stuff out of the van and put other stuff in. It was to be a short visit, but the FIFA U21 World Cup is being played in Canada, so we are off to a double header tonight – neither of us has been to a good quality soccer game before, so it will be interesting but probably also a bit boring.

So,,, we’ve now completed the north-west loop (in exactly 9 weeks and 17400!! km) and about to head off on the southern loop. Hopefully, this will be more weeks and less kilometres as the fuel bill is killing us.