A few last things about the Rockies trip, then I’ll shut up about it, I promise. It’s hard to believe we’ve been back a week. We’ve kind of started planning our next trip already.

The five best parts of the trip, for me:

• Lake O’Hara (pic) was almost certainly the most spectacular place I’ve ever been. Part of what made it so incredible was the relative isolation — only 40 other people are in the immediate area, so you don’t really see anyone else apart from the bus ride in and out. Lake Oesa, where we hiked to, was like a natural cathedral.
• Peyto Lake (pic | video) was a quick stop along the highway to Jasper, and was swarmed with tourists, but the scenery was immaculate: the mountains, the glacier, the impossible blue of the lake, the valley stretching north…it made for stunning pictures and a nice little video I posted to YouTube.
• Moraine Lake (pic) was almost as pretty as Lake Louise and about one-tenth as crowded. Our room at the lodge gave us a beautiful view of the lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks, and was the perfect home base from which to start our trip.
• Beauty Creek (pic) kind of snuck up on us, a short hike up a series of waterfalls and cascades, just off the highway but feeling miles away from anything. At that point in the week we didn’t really expect to be stunned and surprised anymore, but we were.
• The Athabasca Glacier (pic). There’s not much to say about this; we got to walk on a glacier. The glacier, though huge, was dwarfed by the surrounding mountains and was one little bit of a huge ice field that fed rivers running into three different oceans. I’ve never felt so small in my life.

In general, we had some really good fortune on our trip. The weather, for example, was better than we could’ve hoped for the first five days…sunny and in the teens, with no rain or snow whatsoever until the last two days when most of our outdoor activities were finished anyway. The food was terrific for the most part, though we can thank good research for that. Our rental car was comfortable, good on gas and had zero problems over the 600+ km we covered. It had a good stereo too, not that we needed it; apart for the Calgary-Canmore stretch of highway, we turned off the stereo/radio for the entire trip. There was more than enough natural beauty to keep us occupied. Finally, we lucked out — eventually — with the wildlife. Apparently it’d be pretty hard to spend a week in the Rockies without seeing deer, bighorn sheep or elk, but we got to see chipmunks and pikas high up around Lake O’Hara, and we got even got to see a coyote and a wolf just outside of Banff.

OK, I’ll do my best to curb any more Rockies talk.

[tags]rockies, lake o’hara, peyto lak, moraine lake, beauty creek, athabasca glacier[/tags]