Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2006
...Or more accurately in Vicki's case - Squirrel Country! Paul's keen eye for wildlife in Jasper has had him seeing elk, ferrets and even a bear with her cubs. Lets just say Vicki hasn't done so well. Either way, between us we have clocked up a pretty impressive Sitch family wildlife spotting score!
We have had a fantastic five days in Jasper. The Rockies are amazing and the scenery has kept us continually awed!
On arriving in Jasper, we were worried to find out that our hostel (HI Jasper) was miles out of town and that all the trailheads were equally hard to reach. We needn't have worried as the hostel laid on a load of hikes and activities that cheaply got us to see everything we wanted to. We also met loads of great people, backpacking in a like-minded way to us (a huge relief after party time students in Toronto). On the downside, the hostel has been a serious baptism of fire to dormitory living! Our dorm held well over 40 people and at least 5 of them had serious snoring afflictions. Not least the guy on the last night who we genuinely thought might pass away
as he only breathed in a huge snore every 2 minutes or so! When will someone tackle this nocturnal nuisance!!
The key highlights of our time here were a trek to the "Bald Hills' which enabled a much needed 8 mile leg stretch after the train and fantastic view over "Maligne Lake" (apparently cursed as evil after a priest lost his horse there). On the way home from this trip we stopped to swim in "Lake Annette", near Jasper, with an amazing mountain backdrop. Another highlight was a trek to the "Valley of the Five Lakes" where each lake is a different shade of green - as was Vicki following an excess of honey beer the night before! This was followed by cliff jumping at an idealic lake called "Horseshoe Lake" (although we were too woosy to brave the glacial water and just watched!).
When we haven't been on the organised hikes, we have been bear tracking - somewhat unsuccessfully, mooching around in Japser in our favourite cafe - The Soft Rock, or cooking up a storm in the hostel kitchen.
Finally, of course we had to sample the local brew (the afore-mentioned honey beer) and joined
the HI pub crawl for the best chance to do this. The highlight of this being Vicki's eviction from a pub for not being able to prove she was over 18, despite being possibly the oldest there (including the bar maid and crawl organiser!). Anyway, it was a great night and a good chance to get to know all our HI buddies who we were sad to say goodbye to when we left.
Well, since we got to Jasper the weather has gone from a sunny 29 degrees to a chilly 5! What happened to our year long summer!? We're off to chase the sun...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0192s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
wij
non-member comment
hey guys
looks like your having fun. some of the places look cool.both look happy. well work is ok. hollie is good. missing you. wij x x