Skyline Trail

Wow! Sometimes time just gets away from me.  I cannot believe I haven't written since September!

This semester, I got to pick my own courses instead of just doing the required ones.  I was pretty excited about it and instantly honed in on a genetics course.  It was new and something I thought was interesting.  For my second course, I picked an immunology course.  Me and immunology go way back and we're not exactly friends.  I've never had a huge passion for the subject but it's very important in the field of cancer treatment, so I figured I owed it to myself to do this course and not avoid it simply because I don't love it.  

Little did I know that I had set myself up for a really tough semester.  Pro tip: don't take a master's level genetics course when you have no genetics background.  And if you want to have a fun semester, don't choose a class you know nothing about and a class that you don't particularly love! 

In the end, it was a very very challenging couple months. But I survived!  And I might go as far as saying I actually like immunology now. Since then, I've been working on a literature review and have had a couple special visitors from Canada.  At the rate I'm going I'll probably write about it sometime in July, but for now, I'm finally ready to write an awesome blog post about mine and Sander's adventure on the Skyline Trail.

Hiking the ST was sort of like running a long distance race...but without the running part.  At first, I loved every single step, then I just wanted it to be over and by the end, I was completely high from what we had just accomplished.

Let me start from the beginning.

The ST has been on my bucket list for years.  It's a 45km trek that starts at Maligne Lake in Jasper.  You need to reserve campsites months in advance because the biggest campsite along the trail only accommodates 8 tents.  When we booked our trip to Canada for the summer, I hopped online immediately to reserve spots for this trip.  To my disappointment, the ideal campsites had already been booked but there was room at Snowbowl (12km in) and Signal (37km in).  Even though it wasn't ideal, we reserved the sites and vowed to get the details sorted out later.

Turns out later never really happened.  We were to spend two nights on the trail (Sunday and Monday) and thought we'd just spend the night in Jasper on the Saturday before starting the hike.  What we failed to realize though was that this was the Canada Day long weekend and there was absolutely nothing available for us! Ooops.  We only had 12km to hike on the first day so we decided to just drive to Jasper super early and start hiking that day. It was the beginning of July so even if we started hiking at 3 in the afternoon we'd have plenty of sunlight to get to our first campsite.

The day before our trip we headed over to Campers Village and bought bear spray, bangers, flares, bells, whistles, water treatment tablets, a map, a first aid kit and basically everything you could need to be safe on the trail.  Then we went to the grocery store and bought the lightest most calorie dense foods we could find and made Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 food packets.  We packed our bags, loaded our water, weighed in around 30lbs each and were ready to hike! After sucking so badly on planning the trip, we were pretty darn organized with the packing part of it! 

Sunday, we were up early and on the road by 6:30am.  The entire drive there, it poured and poured and poured.  Lucky for us, it has eased to a nice drizzle and we embarked on our adventure dry and ready for an awesome hike.

The first day of hiking was really enjoyable.  The elevation gain was gentle, the scenery was beautiful, the weather was perfect and we were warm and excited!

The highlight of the first day was me falling into the river.  Yup.  Leave it to me to wear through both pairs of hiking socks within the first 5K! The saddest thing was that there was even a bridge to cross! Don't know how I danced for so long because let's face it, we all know I'm not the most graceful person!

On the second day, the challenge began.  The ST is pretty famous for it's views for one main reason: the majority of the hike is above the treeline.  It's true, the views are ah-mazing, but what every online source failed to mention is exactly how cold and windy it is up there.  We knew it'd be cold, but we weren't quite expecting below 0 temperatures overnight.  Needless to say, it was a chilly sleep with few zzzz's caught.  We woke up tired, stiff from the cold and 30 pound packs we weren't used to carrying and a bit uncertain about the distance we had to travel that day. Due to our poor planning, we had 25km to cover.  But we remained optimistic and hit the trail bright eyed and busy tailed for a great day in the wilderness.

After a short climb, we crossed Big Shovel Pass and started working our way to Lake Curator.  We stood at the top of the pass admiring the amazing views (pictured below) and slowly descended down the other side of the mountain.  This is when the challenge really began.  Shortly after we crossed the pass, it started getting windy and I don't mean a strong breeze.  I mean wind.  I'm talking gusts that nearly knocked you off your feet! I'm talking wind so strong that Sander and I could barely hear each other talking.  It was cold and to make things even more awesome, we were getting sort of tired.  We aren't used to hiking with packs and to top it off, this was the first hike of the season.  After hitting rock bottom energy wise, we decided to sit down behind some rocks for lunch and recharge before climbing The Notch.

As we were eating, we were admiring the scenery around us and trying to figure out how we were going to get over the mountain in front of us.  We couldn't see a trail at all but knew that we had to cross somewhere.  Looking at the mountain Sander uttered the words "we'll it's definitely not there" while pointing at a snow capped section of the mountain.  We continued to eat in silence when I noticed two blobs on the snow in front of us.  Two blobs that were very people like.....two blobs that were hiking....two blobs forcing Sander to eat his words because that's exactly where we had to cross the mountain.

Now, everything that I read online said that the Notch is the toughest part of the hike but that's it's manageable as long as it's not entirely snowed in.  We had heard from other hikers that the Notch was mostly clear with only a small patch of snow to cross.  What NO ONE mentioned was how insanely steep the Notch is.  Not even the elevation map gave a really good indication of what we were to face up there.  When we booked the trip, we had no idea we had a scramble over loose gravel and ice ahead of us.

It was absolutely terrifying.  There were no giant boulders to get your footing.  It was soggy, muddy earth that made you slide with every step.  And then there was the snow.  It was icy, wet and 100% unstable.  The first step I took, I slid down about half a meter.  My heart was in my throat and I kept thinking in my head: "why the hell am I doing this!?".

Obviously, we didn't die, but it was probably one of the scariest things I've done....but also one of the most amazing things.  We were literally on top of a mountain!!!

It was so amazing.  Pictures really do not do it justice.  We enjoyed the view for about 2 minutes before coming back to reality.  Fact was that we still had about 12km to hike before we were at camp for the evening.  This is the part of the hike where I just wanted it to be over.  We had conquered the mountain and I was ready to set up camp and rest.  My knees were aching, my feet were aching, I had blisters on my hands from my trekking poles, I was cold and hungry and just overall done with walking for the day.  But despite all of this, we had to continue. 

So on we went.

It snowed, it rained, it sunned, it clouded and we walked and walked and walked and walked. 

We walked more. 

And more.

And more.

We were exhausted and had had enough, but, this is also the part where I fell in love with the hike.  It's really like running a race for me.  You want to give up. You're tired and each step is a challenge, but somehow you love all of it.  You feel energized and inspired despite wanting to collapse.  It's the nature.  The smell of the fresh air.  The sound of the wind.  The ache in your legs.  The thirst and the hunger.  It all fuels my soul.  Except for the mosquitoes.  They can just die for all I care.

Around 6pm we hit Tekarra campground and had dinner there while swatting furiously at the hundreds of mosquitoes (this is not an exaggeration).  We shivered through our dinner and hit the trail again for the last 5km to our campground for the night.

Despite our sense of hopelessness fueled by fatigue, we made it to our second campsite.  One thing we definitely learned on this trip was that packs really slow you down.  We set up our tent, hung our food in the bear-proof hangers and crashed at 10pm for the worst sleep ever.  It was so cold. We both slept in all of our layers with hot water bottles until our 4 o'clock alarm was waking us from this shivery slumber.

Yes, four in the morning.

Remember how we weren't very organized and didn't get a place in Jasper for the night before we started hiking? Well, that bit us in the butt for finishing the hike.  Normally, you leave your vehicle at the end and take the shuttle to the start of the hike.  Since we weren't starting early enough, we missed the shuttle and instead left our car at the beginning of the hike.  Ultimately, this meant hiking 10km down the mountain before 9am in order to catch the shuttle back to our car in time.  Doh.

I really thought it was going to be awful, but in the end, it was pretty nice.  I hadn't really slept since I was so cold, so I was glad to get up and moving again.  We hit the trail at 4:45 silent and exhausted, listening to music while meandering down the uninspiring fire road.  Between the heavy packs and insane distance the day before, the level gravel road was a nice reprieve.

We made it to the end by 7:30am and had breakfast at the trail head while waiting for the shuttle.  Eventually, more people trickled in that were starting the hike that day and it was really fun to chat with them.  We had just walked 45km across the Rocky Mountains.  I don't think there's anything as satisfying knowing you did it with your own sweat and determination.

In the end, I am so proud that we pulled through.  There was a time where we thought of taking one of the side paths to the highway and hitchhiking back to Jasper.  We were exhausted, hurting and we desperately wanted to give up and I am so glad we didn't.  It was worth every single blister and mosquito bite and I would do it again in a heartbeat.