Monday, August 8

Today I decided to step it up a notch and try my luck at the A hike. Michele is leading a group around what she called the Emerald Triangle, but my book calls the Wapta Highline Circuit. Truth be told, Michele’s name is probably better since this hike is a loop starting at Emerald Lake and consisting of a nearly equilateral triangle with each side being about 4 miles long.

Almost all of the 2900 feet of elevation gain on this hike happened on the first leg of the triangle (going in a counter-clockwise direction as we did). We ascended up through the forest over a seemingly endless series of switchbacks. I was walking with Amanda who had done this hike at August Camp last year and knew about the switchbacks. She suggested we try to count them. We did. All 103 of them. This was probably the most difficult stretch of hiking I did all week, but there were two saving graces. First, we were in the cool red cedar forest most of the way. This ascent would have been a bear if we were out in the bright sunshine we had for the remainder of the hike. The second saving grace was knowing that the rest of the hike was all downhill.

The Burgess Pass is at the top of this long ascent. Once again, stunning views. In one direction is the town of Field in the river valley below. The other direction has a view of the Burgess Shale and President Range. Both are very nice.

The second leg of the triangle is a gradual descent of about 1000 feet that goes past the Burgess Shale beds. This is a world-renowned place for collecting middle Cambrian fossils. I don’t know a whole lot about this, but for about $120 you can go on a day long hike up into the fossil beds themselves where a ranger explains the significance of the fossils. Two other August Campers were actually visiting the Burgess Shale beds today and we waved at them as we walked by. One fun fact I learned from them later that I found amusing: the type of rock in the Burgess Shale beds is actually shyst NOT shale. I guess someone from marketing thought Burgess Shale sounded better than Burgess Shyst. They’re probably right.

Even without the improperly named fossil beds along this part of the trail, the views are stunning. I was hiking alone for most of this stretch and it was really nice. There was a view of a waterfall coming off of Michael Peak and the view of Emerald Lake below became more and more visible as you went along. It was kind of nice to go at my own pace and stop for photos whenever I wanted.

The third leg of the triangle descends the remaining 2000 feet back to Emerald Lake. This part takes you out to the river below the aforementioned waterfall and then follows that down to Emerald Lake. I did this part of the hike with Frank and Maureen and we were the first three to arrive back at the lake. This gave me plenty of time to take pictures of the canoes making their way across the alpine blue waters of the lake with a backdrop of the mountains we had just hiked through.

I realized two things on this hike. First, I understand why Michele said this hike was one of the main reasons she came back to lead at August Camp again this year. She hadn’t done this hike last year, but she did see the pictures and wanted to do it. The hike was amazing. Second, I realized that I can do the A hikes. Although it was challenging, I was in the lead group both on the way up the big climb on the first leg of the triangle and on the way down back to the lake. I’ll have to keep this in mind when choosing hikes the rest of the week.

Another fabulous feature of this hike is that it’s close to camp – about 40 minutes away before you get to the town of Field. This meant that we got back to camp in time for me to take my first solar shower. It actually wasn’t so bad. I had filled a heavy-duty plastic bag with river water Sunday morning and left it in the sun for two days. There were plywood stalls set up at camp where you could hang these up and use the nozzle coming out of them to take a shower using bio-degradable soap (side note: I learned bio-degradable soap only degrades in the soil – it doesn’t do so if you leave the suds in the water). The shower was relatively warm – good enough for being out in the middle of the woods.

We had a nice beef dish for dinner tonight and then I learned about another August Camp tradition at campfire – cookie vouchers. If you see someone doing a particularly nice/generous thing for someone, you can nominate them for a cookie voucher. They can redeem this voucher for an extra cookie sometime as they are going through the lunch line. I nominated Virginia for letting us borrow her tent for the car camp we are doing tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, here are the hikes scheduled for Tuesday:

• Julie/Michele: Car camp to Jasper National Park
• Mary: C hike. Peyto Lake. 3.8 miles/760 feet.
• Eva: B- hike. Stanley Glacier. 5.2 miles/1200 feet.
• Carl: B+ hike. Iceline Summit. 8.5 miles/2200 feet.
• Ron: A hike. Bourgeau Lake and Harvey Pass. 12 miles/3400 feet. Several people said this was their favorite hike of the week.

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