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Published: August 23rd 2011
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The Canadian rockies crept up on us as we drove on from Medicine Hat. Then they began to tease us with their bearably visible ridges on the horizon every time we crested a hill. When we got to Calgary we were hungry for some mountains and couldn't wait to get here!
First of all Canada charges everybody $10 per day just to be in Banff/ Glacier/ Jasper National parks! We payed for the first day, not knowing that there were ways around that exorbitant fee. We met a guy that had been living here in Banff for the past two years and learned that we could just avoid paying the fees completely by simply driving through the 'pass holders' line at the toll booths. We did so, and began to learn about all of the other crazy fees charged here.
If you want to camp, you have to apply for a permit, pay about $40 for that permit, and then if you want to have a camp-fire, there is another expensive permit to buy. Then you have to buy your wood from the park service to boot! I guess I can understand getting your wood from the service, or
else there would be a lot fewer trees around.
We decided to bush whack the first night here by driving away from town toward the ski hill and turned off to find a perfect nook to pitch the tent. We packed up at first light to avoid the possible confrontation with a park warden. Apparently the tickets they hand out here are outrageously expensive, like $300 for not having bear repellant and $400 for camping illegally. With this in mind we stayed at a hostel in town the second night. They said they were booked full that night after we checked in and we noticed that there was a bed in our room that went unused that night. When we decided in the morning that we wanted to stay there another night they said they were full again and that we would have to try somewhere else.
We put our bags in the baggage hold in the basement and went to hike up Rundle Mountain, which was quoted as taking eight hours to complete. We rode our bikes to the trail head and began to ascend. We went right up the first bit of the trail to find
it became rock climbing territory if we wanted to continue that way. We decided that we found the wrong trail and went to climb further up and right in hopes of running into the proper trail.
We never found the proper trail. We bushwhacked our way up about 3,500 vertical feet and about the same lateral until we came to an area just under a saddle of the ridge of the mountain. At this point our feet were burning up from all the traversing we had done in efforts to keep climbing and running into the actual trail. We were about three hours in when we began to rumble down the hill. We found a dry gully that we followed down the mountain. It took us only about an hour to get all the way down that gully n=until we wrapped around the base of the mountain to find where we parked the bikes a few hours before.
With the knowledge that we had no room at the hostel we decide to use the kitchen there to cook up a large lunch. Dan hadn't turned his key in yet and we kept our valuables in a locker in
our room that day. After we ate he went to get something from h he locker and he discovered that the room was mostly empty. Dan was convinced that they had made a logistical error about how many beds were available and took a nap on the bed he slept in the night before. I went downstairs to have a beer during happy hour in the bar there at the hostel while keeping an eye out for anyone checking in. No new check-ins was a good sign.
We went downstairs for the trivia quiz they host on Monday nights and fell into our groove with a couple beers and a good showing in the trivia. When we went upstairs to crash for the night we found a group of guys that had just arrived and were getting settled into the beds we thought were empty!
We decided that it was too late at that point to try to bushwhack another night in the park and we went to the HI (Hosteling International) hostel up the road.
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Laura Sparley
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Glacier National Park is by far my most favorite National Park in the world:) Glad you guys got to see a part of it!