Tyson Goes OutsideEverything outdoors and adventure!

Jul 8th Shadow Lake Hike

Adrian and I have been friends since early elementary school, Troy and I have been friends since junior high. As many guys tend to do, we occasionally go months on end without talking much or seeing each other. Thanks to technology we now have a continuous group chat. It was in this group chat that it came to my attention that we hadn’t seen each other in a good long while. So I suggested a hike, Adrian lives in Calgary and Troy lives just east of Edmonton. So the plan was, Troy would pick me up on his way down to Calgary, we would spend Friday night at Adrian’s, Saturday we hike in and Sunday we hike out and drive home.

Friday night, Adrian and Troy convinced me, as is tradition, to go out for a night on the town. I’ve got to admit, Calgary is a nice city to wander around on a Friday night, the architecture is amazing, the bars we went into seemed quite nice, not too crowded or loud. At the end of the night, Adrian, being a bit of a foodie, took us to some rough looking truck stop for 3 AM breakfast. It was dang delicious.

The next morning none of us awoke with ambition. We slowly repacked and organized our gear, luckily Troy had a lot of his own gear and I had duplicates of most of my gear since over the years I have hoarded and upgraded my equipment. It was interesting to see their packing style compared to mine. I have started to get into that snobby minimalist hiker mentality, while they packed more like they were going car camping… I do not pack things that I MIGHT want to use. They, on the other hand, packed 3 breakfasts in case they changed their minds on what they wanted in the morning.  Good thing they’re tough. In fairness, I feel I should mention I used to be much worse than them. On our early hikes Erin and I packed in cans of stew and I remember bringing multiple books, unsure of which one I would want to read that night.

We drove to Banff and went to the tourist office so I could replace my lost park pass and double check that our campsite was accessible. It turns out, that this early into the spring, the Twin Lakes campsite is still covered in snow and mud. So we made a snap decision to do a longer hike into Shadow Lake. We hit the trailhead and changed into our hiking clothes, slathered on sunscreen and bug spray (why has no one made a sunscreen/bug spray combo? seems I always use them together anyway). We then started our hike in, the trail started with along a wide mining road up a gentle grade. Along the path, we crossed a few patches of downed trees, likely from melting snow sliding down the mountain. About halfway to our intended destination, we reached a nice long bridge crossing a fast running stream and a campsite. It was nice to dip our hands in some cool water and splash it on our faces. From there we started to gain elevation on switchbacks. They led up through old timber and eventually brought us to our campsite. We set up our two tents, we had a 1 person tent and a 2 person tent. We figured the best sleeping arrangement was Troy in the single person and Adrian and I in the two person. The reasoning being, I toss and turn, and barely sleep at night on a good day, and Adrian sleeps like the dead… but also snores like a generator running low on fuel. So Troy being the only normal sleeper in the group would likely kill one of us if forced to share a tent. While we made camp, a French couple arrived and set up their tent, I gave a casual hello before we went to the kitchen area and made supper. We had some basic dehydrated food packs, they were… edible, for the most part. While we were eating our neighbours came by and said hello again and joined us at our table. We got to chatting and it turns out they were from Montreal and do quite a bit of flying around to go hiking. They seemed like thoroughly nice people.

After supper, I washed up the dishes and we decided to throw around the frisbee that Troy brought “just in case”. Turns out those things are a lot of fun and super handy in the backcountry. The French couple even joined us, turns out ultimate frisbee is more popular in the east and they both played on teams…  Once the sun went down we didn’t have much to do other than go to bed, so we did that… and let me tell you… Adrian and I are not small… but that tent sure is, good thing we are such close friends. I was fighting a cold all week and that night it decided it was time to strike and shut off the airway through my nose…. so I spent the night mad that I couldn’t breathe and somewhat annoyed at Adrian’s snoring… Maybe I was just jealous that he was able to sleep.

The next morning I had cereal with rehydrated milk while Troy and Adrian had rehydrated eggs… Troy being the over-packer that he is, somehow produced a few packets of ketchup.. he sure is handy to have in the backcountry. We bid the French couple adieu while we broke down most of our camp. We left Troy’s single person tent set up and cached our gear in it so we could hike the last few km up to Shadow Lake without our bulky packs. It was a bit of a chilly overcast morning, in fact Troy had to lend me the old farm jacket he packed. It was around that time I stopped making fun of his 75 liter pack. When we got to the lake it was just clear enough to see the mountains on the far side. It was an amazing sight.

 

 

 

Posted in Hiking, Photo Dropwith no comments yet.