Golden Roadtrip

I found a great deal online for condo rentals at Kicking Horse Resort in Golden, which is a ski lodge in the winter. I booked 3 nights, we brought along some food in the cooler (we had a full sized kitchen, even bigger than the one in my own condo), and we were on our way to Golden!

DAY ONE:

We left Vancouver at 6am, in anticipation of the 8 hour drive. It was beautiful and we saw lots of trains and mountains.

DAY TWO:

We spent the day going east to Alberta. Yoho National Park was on the way, so we did an easy hike to the pretty Wapta Falls.

Takakkaw Falls is one of the highest waterfalls in Canada. It is also in Yoho National Park (a bit of a drive off the highway, but only a short walk from the parking lot).

 We arrived at Lake Louise in the afternoon. What a magnificent blue, and look at that glacier.

We did our second hike of the day - a "moderate" trail up to Lake Agnes and the Big Beehive.

This is a glimpse of Lake Louise halfway up to Lake Agnes:

The Big Beehive from Mirror Lake. We went up all the way to the top of that beehive later!

Lake Agnes:

The view of Lake Louise from the top of the Big Beehive:

Needless to say, we were pretty tired by the time we got back to Golden. Those two hikes were in preparation for the big one, for day three...

DAY THREE:

Glacier National Park has some amazing hikes. The park ranger suggested that we do Abbott Ridge, because of the full views of many glaciers at the top. It was one of the most difficult hikes listed on the park pamphlet, as it is a 7.5 hour hike with a 1060m ascent over 7 km (14km round trip). I was nervous!

It was very steep. The first third of the hike was in the forest, up to Marion Lake. It reminded me of the Grouse Grind.

View of the valley and the highway running through it, from Marion Lake.

Two-thirds of the way up, we arrived at the alpine meadows and the views of the mountains and glaciers started opening up. The views got exponentially better as we hiked higher and higher.

We had 360 degree views of glaciers and mountains at the top. You can't see any of these from the highway on the valley floor. Definitely worth it!

DAY FOUR:

We embarked on our drive back to Vancouver. We took the long scenic way, the Crow's Nest highway, adding an extra hour and a half to our drive. It rained heavily as we drove to Revelstoke.

We did a bit of wine tasting in Kelowna before hopping back in the car.

We ended up being on the road for almost 12 hours....what a long day!

2000 km driven in four days with three hikes - this is the most intense road trip I've ever been on! Thank you Leonard for driving all but 150 km :)