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Published: August 30th 2011
The hostel in Golden was awesome.
The hostel in Banff was awesome.
The hostel in Lake Louise was awesome.
The hostel in Jasper was a hell hole.
We pull up to the parking lot. Everything looks normal. We're halfway up a mountain and a decent drive into the town centre. "It's okay" we all think, "this is what budget roadtripping is all about." It's the cheapest place in town. We unload our stuff and make our way around the back of the building. Things are broken down, it looks a little rough. Gone are the manicured lawns, flower pots, and updated buildings of hostels past. We open a creaky screen door and stand inside on a dark and musty porch, waiting to check in. Sonja's face starts to fall. The grimace sets in. She mutters "Uh, I feel like I'm back in Cambodia." There are mosquitos
everywhere. In the 20 minutes we stand there, our welcome gift is at least a dozen new bites for each of us. Trevor and I are optimistic, thinking that it's just like camping. Sonja has never been camping. She's thinking we are trying to torture her. Our turn to check in comes
Bow Lake
So pretty! and we are assigned bunks in the coed dorm room. The dorm room has 42 beds.
Forty two beds. Our adventure in the refugee camp has begun.
The three of us are given the bunk beds closest to the door. First perspectives are that we could escape the quickest should fire or brawl break out in back of the camp. Reality though, is that the room only has one door, and we are the new welcoming committee for 39 people. The floor creaks like an old man's casket. It's hot. It's stuffy. Someone smells like body odour and/or dirty backpacker. The stench of sweaty hiking shoe wafts past our nostrils. Sonja looks pissed. And skeptical. We tell ourselves that it's cheap. Only for sleeping. And only for two nights. Self medicate with the reminder of how much money we are saving.
Hello Jasper, it's nice to meet you. Trevor and I have been to Jasper several times as kids, but this of course is Sonja's first introduction. It is not going well.
Following our adventure in Lake Louise, we spent the night in a hostel and were on the road for Jasper by 8am the following
morning. The second half of our drive between Banff and Jasper was along the Icefields Parkway, a drive equally as spectacular as the Bow Valley Parkway that took us to Lake Louise from Banff. There were several "must sees" along the route, making the 230 KM or so drive take the entire day. First stops were Bow Lake, where we photographed mirror reflections of the majestic mountains on the lake, and Peyto Lake, an amazing, turquoise colored glacier fed lake that was far, far, far superior to anything Lake Louise had to offer. The color was mind blowing!
Our big stop of the day was the Columbia Icefield where we took a ginormous bus thing onto the Athabasca Glacier. Alrighty, this is the thing with the glacier: Trevor and I really struggled with the idea of it. The "tour" talked all about how the glacier is melting, what it means for the environment, how we should all care (which we do!)... but then here we are paying money to take a big ass bus up there and wander around. And it's not just us.
Truckloads of tourists do it all day every day for the entire season. It sure
doesn't feel very responsible or environmentally ethical to us. Something just didn't sit right about the experience and we still feel a little guilty for partaking in the adventure.
The last stop of the day, before rolling into the refugee camp, was Athabasca falls. It was a pretty waterfall, but by that point in the day, we were done with sightseeing and just wanted a place to put our feet up. Thanks to a bedtime dousing of bug spray, we survived our first night in the refugee camp relatively unscathed.
Day two in Jasper: Operation My Socks Are Soggy.
The day was one great big mud puddle after another. We started off with Maligne Lake. Our goal was to do two smaller 90 minute hikes around the lake and a possible canoe adventure. Ten minutes into the first hike, the showers started and we were soggy in minutes. Trevor and I sorta laughed it off, but Sonja not so much. Apparently, hiking sopping wet through mosquito infested forests is not that big in Holland. Thus, we decided to ix-nay the second hike and/or canoeing, but to continue with our plan of checking out Maligne Canyon, an insanely
deep canyon with a raging river below. Oh man.
Maligne Canyon has signs everywhere. The problem, is that the signs are non decipherable. There are all these color and number coded trails on the maps, but a total lack of signage on the paths. We set off in what we thought was a quick jaunt down the canyon for a better look... and returned 3 hours later soaking wet and covered in mud. We started off at bridge number two and on the map, there was a suspension bridge that didn't look too far off. This is the thing with wandering through a canyon: what goes down, most certainly must come back up.
We descended very quickly... and then what was done was done, so we kept walking thinking the suspension bridge was "just around the corner." There was no damn suspension bridge. And, while we were at it, our path had become a slippery mud pit. Not such a big deal, if we weren't on a steep hill with a raging glacier fed river below and no barrier to stop us should we misstep. Not kidding. Perhaps that is why the hike ended up taking 3 hours
Ahem. Don't Slip.
In search of the suspension bridge. Maligne Canyon. - at times we treaded cautiously, like geriatric patients on a waitlist for hip replacements. All the while Sonja and I were saying "Trevor, really, there is no suspension bridge. It's pouring rain. Let's just go back." We weren't prepared for a mother hike. We didn't even have water with us. And Trevor was replying "No no, there is one! I've been here before! Let's keep going." You can bet that we eventually found that damn suspension bridge... and that we then had to hike all the way back up the canyon to our car. Tough day.
There had been a tentative plan to check out Pyramid Lake after Maligne Canyon but we quickly crossed that off the list and headed back to the refugee camp for hot showers, food, and an early night thanks to a new development on our road trip itinerary: an emergency root canal for me!
The day before our trip, I began experiencing awful pain in one of my teeth. I was given some drugs to hold off the inevitable (hopefully) because there wasn't any time to have the procedure before we left. However, the combination of glacier water (rafting), the mountain air
The Suspension Bridge
It exists - about 4000 Km from where we thought it would, but still, it exists! (hiking), and just plain
eating proved too much for me and I caved. My dentist was able to arrange a last minute appointment with a specialist for me - if I could be there the next day by 2pm. Jasper is a good 9 hour drive from home. That means to make my appointment on time, we had to be on the road no later than 5am. Not ideal, but definitely doable. If we crashed by 10pm, we could still have a solid 7 hour sleep. Humpf, that's what we thought.
It turns out that Thursday nights at Refugee Camp are pub crawl night. So. Team Canada and Team Holland, the new welcoming committee for the 42 person coed dorm room, had the pleasure of greeting a nonstop stream of drunken fools beginning at about 1am. And we're not just talking about a few noisy jerks. No. We're talking about the most obnoxious nonstop train of whispers, giggles, thumps, flashlights, cellphone ringing, and door slamming known to man. We were even treated to some bloke's alarm going off at 3am for 20 minutes while he was in the loo. It sounded like a fire alarm. Some girl and her
boyfriend fought it out in the hallway and after he stormed away, we listened to her first cry for 10 minutes, and then get on the phone with her mom. I thought Trevor was going to murder someone. Sonja and I would have been his accomplices. Finally, around 3:30am, the three of us looked at each other with a mutual "Screw it." Up we all got and out we all went. I'll tell you this... the urge to pull the fire alarm on our way out the door has never been so great. Logic and uh, the law, ultimately won out, but the urge sure was there! Suffice to say it, we made the dentist appointment with plenty of time to spare.
And
that my friends, was Jasper.
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Karin
non-member comment
I LOVE your blogs!
Sorry to hear that the Jasper leg of your trip wasn't great but when the going gets tough, the tough get going!! Good to see you three all still smiling on the Suspension Bridge albeit soggy. Maligne Lake can be nasty. That's where we got caught in a snowstorm while kayaking last year! Hope your tooth is OK : )