Hiking/Trekking

Canadian Rockies

Posted by pdittman on August 7th, 2024 in '24 - Canadian Rockies, Category Descriptors

They say, the third time is the charm – so it is for us and the Canadian rockies. We had first planned this trip for September, 2020.

We all remember what happened in 2020 – of course, it didn’t happen. So we replanned for September, 2021. Nope, we weren’t quite out of the woods (though we DID make it to Canada, just not the way we expected).

In 2024, we FINALLY made it to the Canadian Rockies, though even that trip was endangered by significant wildfires in Jasper, devastating the area and causing us to do some last-minute replanning.

We were still blessed to be able to make it to the area – visiting Lake Louise, Banff, and Olympic National Park in the state of Washington.

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Finally, the Canadian Rockies

It’s finally happened – and it was pretty amazing. I say finally because this adventure seemed plagued from the start. Yes, plagued, as in COVID. We’d originally planning this for Sept, 2020 – and of course, that didn’t happen. Though in Jan/Feb 2021, we had a brief stint of optimism and planned it again for Sept. 2021, but a new round of COVID variants during summer 2021 squashed that plan. Shelving it for our Spain/Andorra adventure in ’23, we put

Lake Louise

Our adventure started with a few days in Lake Louise. Situated about a half-hour north of Banff, Lake Louise is world-renowned for its glacially-fed turquoise color – of course, attracting the crowds. It was our first exposure to the area, so all was new. We stayed at a hostel in Lake Louise – the Hostel’s International High Alpine center – an experience similar to some of the mountain houses in Europe and even the front-country Highland Center of the Appalachian

Banff

Our original plan had been to continue northward from Lake Louise to Jasper, but sadly, the Jasper wildfires had other plans. We were fortunate to find available space, especially after the evacuations forced other travelers to also make adjustments. Banff is definitely a tourist destination – with a significant number of places offering accommodations – as well as stores offering all sorts of local and typical upscale wares. The town has a good infrastructure to handle the volume, parking, etc.,

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park had not been part of the earlier versions of our itinerary, it was a last-minute add forced by the Jasper wildfires. Serendipitous though since it’s unlikely that we ever would have visited the park otherwise – just so many other places to visit, so little time! After the mixed bag of crowds and amazing scenery of Banff, Olympic NP was far more ‘tame’ – fewer people – yet with scenery which rivaled some of Banff’s best. Unfortunately,