Considering how busy Banff National Park is throughout the summer, I couldn’t believe how empty the trail was to Hector Lake. The idea that tourists are all overcrowding the same spots holds some truth because on my long weekend trip to visit Kristine, she took me to a lot of places that were surprisingly not busy.
Hector Lake is the first lake you pass on Highway 93 (the Icefields Parkway) after you leave Lake Louise. You can see it from the highway when you drive past, but there’s no formal parking lot for the trailhead. Looking on my Gaia GPS app, I could actually see 3 trailheads for the lake that all connect along slightly different trails. They all have pull-outs where you can park and since they’re not popular, it’s not hard to find space.
Hector Lake was another hike on Kristine’s list of hikes she wanted to do this summer. After a noisy night at Preacher’s North Campsite, we packed up and drove to Nordegg to get breakfast and a slice of pie at the Miner’s Cafe, before starting the long drive back to Calgary. We planned to break up the drive with the hike to Hector Lake, which is a 5km round trip hike along mostly flat terrain.
The first part of the trail is a bit muddy, but fairly easy. You hike through the trees along a gentle downhill until you reach the Bow River. From here, my GPS showed two options, one continuing along the river and the second crossing the river. I could see the trail continuing on the other side of the river, but there is no bridge, so if you want to cross, be prepared to ford the river. It didn’t look very deep, but we hadn’t brought sandals with us, so we opted to continue along the river.
The trail along the river is a bit harder to follow and disappeared completely near the end. The river eventually turns into more of a delta and we lost the main trail, instead selecting our own path across the braided river channels. Depending on the water level, this could be a challenge and it was a bit muddy right before the foreshore, but we eventually managed to make it to the lake and had an uninterrupted view of the mountains.
It really is a very beautiful lake, but what made it more striking was that we were the only people there. We only saw two other groups on the trail while we visited, but we were alone while at the lake. It’s not a super well established trail, so I can understand why it’s not popular among tourists, who seem to favour Bow Lake and Peyto Lake. We had a nice snack and I went for a quick skinny dip in the lake to cool down. There were some beautiful wildflowers hanging around the river.
Overall, it took us just under two hours to do the full there and back again 5km hike, along with a break. Of the 3 hikes that I did during my short weekend trip to the Rockies, I think this one may have been my favourite because it was such an easy hike and it was so peaceful. The smoke was definitely rolling in while we were there, but it left the photos looking a pretty dreamy. It was a great trip to Banff National Park.
Last week I wrote about hiking Parker Ridge in Banff National Park. After spending the morning on the ridge, Kristine and I backtracked through the park to Saskatchewan Crossing, leaving Banff to explore along Highway 11. This area is mostly public use lands, I’m not sure if it has a formal name, but given that the highway travels to the small town of Nordegg, Kristine referred to the area as Nordegg too. It was my first time visiting the region and it was surprisingly uncrowded and very beautiful. A large part of the area is dominated by Abraham Lake, which people are familiar with in the winter because the surface of the lake freezes and bubbles can be seen frozen in the ice. The area is just as beautiful in the summer, but not very popular.
We followed the highway along the North Saskatchewan River to the start of the lake. We hadn’t originally planned to stay in area overnight, so we hadn’t booked any campsites. However, there is a large first-come, first-served campsite called Preacher’s North rustic camping. It’s a series of campsites along the lake. There is an outhouse, but no other facilities. We didn’t even see a water tap and the lake is too silty to take water from, so be prepared with your own water. I’ve been staying in more rec sites in BC in recent years, but a lot of those sites are small and off the beaten track. I was pleasantly surprised with this campsite. I guess things really are bigger in Alberta because the campsite was huge and we didn’t have any trouble finding a place to pitch our tent. Once settled, we decided to explore further along Highway 11. There’s a hike called Vision Quest about halfway up the lake that Kristine wanted to check out, so that’s where we headed.
To access the hike, you park at the dump and follow signs up around the dump and up through the trees. It is a little confusing at the start because the GPS track doesn’t match the new trail. There used to be an old trail that took a more direct route up the slope from the trailhead, but that area has been closed for restoration, so now you have to hike around the back of the dump instead. If you’re on the right trail, it’s easy to follow, but we started on the wrong trail and it was confusing. If you’re having trouble following, you’re on the wrong trail, go back to the parking lot to find the correct one.
It’s a steep hike that continues through the trees for approximately 1km before the view opens up. From there, you can hike another 7km along the ridge up to the Vision Quest Peak, but that’s a full day hike and our goal was only to hike high enough to get out of the trees. We didn’t quite make it to the alpine as it was very hot and steep (and a little bit smoky), but we hiked just far enough to get a full view of Abraham Lake. It only took us 45 minutes to hike up to our viewpoint, but it was a really phenomenal view for the amount of effort required to get there.
We hung out at the viewpoint for a half hour, enjoying the hazy view of the surrounding mountains and Abraham Lake, before hiking back down to the car. In my opinion, this was the most challenging part of the hike. Whoever constructed this trail wasn’t familiar with switchbacks and it’s extremely steep with a lot of loose rock, so it took me some time to crawl my way down. That might just be my bad knees though, Kristine found the downhill a lot easier. In total, including our break, it took us a little under 2 hours to hike up, but we only did 2km in total.
We returned to our campsite at Preacher’s North and decided to go for a swim and eat supper down by the water. Like I said, I was really impressed with the site. The only problem is that it’s mostly campers and RV’s and since it’s an informal campsite, there are no rules on quiet time. Most of the RV’s turned off their generators overnight, but some didn’t, which is really loud and annoying if you’re sleeping in a tent. But overall, a great option if you forgot to book a campsite in the National Park!
It’s been an interesting summer for kayaking. Usually we do a lot of kayaking in the Spring, focusing mostly on day trips, and one multi-night trip before the end of the season. This Spring, we barely did any kayaking aside from a long weekend trip to Pitt Lake. Seth’s been in school, so it’s hard to accommodate his schedule, but I wanted to do a second trip and we opted to visit Alouette Lake in Golden Ears Park in mid-July. I really wanted to rush up to the lake after work on Friday so that we could spend 2 nights on the lake, but Seth had too much school work, so instead, we drove to the lake early on Saturday morning.
Alouette Lake is a well known destination in the lower mainland. It’s located in Golden Ears Provincial Park, one of the easiest to access locations for frontcountry camping. As a result, the lake is always very busy on the weekends. It’s hard to get frontcountry campsites and you need a free day pass just to enter the park. It used to be easier to backcountry camp in the park, but they’ve recently brought in a reservation system for Viewpoint Beach and Panorama Ridge, so now you have to plan in advance if you want to go backpacking.
Fortunately, it’s still easy to plan marine camping. There are several marine campsites located on the lake and they are all first-come-first-serve. You do need a permit to camp there, but they’re available at camping.bcparks.ca for $5 per person, per night, 2 weeks before your trip. I’m not sure how popular the campsites are in mid-summer. Even though we visited in the middle of July, it rained on and off on Saturday morning, likely deterring some people and meaning that it wasn’t busy. There’s not that many campsites and not a lot of room for overflow, so finding a site could be a problem on a nice weekend.
Alouette Lake is one big, long lake, but it almost feels like two lakes because it gets so narrow at the midpoint of the lake that it gives the illusion of two lakes. Even from South Beach, you can see all the way up the lake to what is known as “the narrows”. There are 3 marine campsites on the lake, as well as East Beach Campsite, which I don’t include because it’s located at the south end of the lake and is accessible by vehicle. I believe it has its own booking website, but the other sites are all FCFS.
The first site is called Moyer Creek. It’s located roughly 10km from South Beach, approximately 1km before the narrows. The second site is located in the narrows and is aptly called, The Narrows. The final site is called Alouette River and is located at the very back of the lake, roughly 18km from South Beach. My ideal trip would have been to paddle to Moyer Creek, camp two nights, and day trip to Alouette River in between. But since we only had one night, we just paddled to Moyer Creek.
It can get very windy on Alouette Lake, so I always advise to paddle early. The wind is almost always blowing north, meaning it should be an easy paddle up the lake and a challenging paddle on the way back. We’ve done day trips on the lake a few times, going as far as Gold Creek and North Beach, which is a 5km paddle from South Beach, but we’d never been further. It was raining when we left South Beach at 9am, but the water was relatively calm as we paddled to Gold Creek. We took a snack break at the entrance to Gold Creek before continuing on towards Moyer Creek.
Unfortunately, it was at this point in the trip that the wind picked up, earlier than we expected, and just our luck, it was blowing south. This meant that we had a pretty rough headwind for the last 5km to Moyer Creek. It wasn’t so windy that it was unsafe, but it was windy enough that it wasn’t a comfortable paddle and it required a lot more energy to battle the wind. We put our heads down and paddled hard until we got to the back of the lake.
The campsite is a little bit confusing upon first visit. There’s not really one central place to camp, it’s more a series of small beaches with campsites cut out of the woods. There was only one person camping there when we arrived, so we had first pick of the rest of the campsites and we got a nice spot at the back of a small beach. A lot of the sites are in the trees, so make sure to pull your boat ashore and walk through the woods when looking for a site. There is a more central area where several of the campsites are, but there are more located around the corner if you don’t see any available. The challenge is that, depending where you camp, it may make it difficult to access the outhouse, bear cache, or creek, which are all located around the main area. The bear cache looked brand new.
Fortunately, the rain stopped by the time we arrived at camp, but we set up our tarp and tent and hoped it wouldn’t return. The sun looked like it might try to make an appearance, so we set up on the beach to have lunch and enjoyed a few hours of solitude while the wind blew whitecaps around the middle of the lake. Eventually, a few other groups arrived in canoes, but in total, there were only 4 groups that stayed overnight.
The wind died down in the afternoon, so we decided to go for another paddle while the weather was calm. I’d been on the fence about if we should stay at Moyer Creek or The Narrows, and I wanted to see the other campsite. I picked Moyer Creek because I figured it would have a better view down the lake. We paddled towards the narrows to check out that site and concluded that we made the right choice staying at Moyer Creek. There’s a nice view from the Narrows, but I think that site is more popular among power boaters and day trippers. There was a large group having a BBQ next to their beached motorboat. I’m sure they had a great time, but they were very loud and it wasn’t the vibe Seth and I envisioned for the weekend, so we were glad that we stayed at Moyer Creek.
We paddled through the narrows into the second part of the lake, but it was too far to go to the back of the lake. The clouds cleared and the sun finally made an appearance. The water was dead calm as we paddled, a rarity for mid-afternoon, and with the sun out, it got pretty hot. Eventually we turned around and paddled back to Moyer Creek to go for a swim. The water was cold, but not so cold you couldn’t hang out in it. Alouette Lake is interesting because it’s a reservoir, meaning that at some point, the river valley was flooded. It’s obvious by the many tree trunks either poking out of the water or submerged just below the surface. You need to watch where you paddle, but it made for a fun swim, with lots of tree trunks to stand on.
We went to bed fairly early and the wind picked up again. It made for a noisy night as I could hear the wind blowing through the trees. I got up to pee around 2am and almost had a heart attack when I shined my headlamp around camp to find a stag staring at me from no more than 10 feet away. It definitely gave credence to the phrase “a deer in headlights”, because it did not move and we both stared at each other as I peed on the other side of the campsite. It was a beautiful animal with gorgeous antlers, but a little too close for comfort. I’m glad I saw it though because I heard it blundering around in the woods the rest of the night and if I hadn’t seen it, I definitely would have thought it was a bear.
We got up early the next morning to get ahead of the wind on our way back to South Beach. The forecast was still calling for a south facing wind, but I was skeptical we’d be lucky enough to get a tailwind. I was right to doubt because despite our early rise, it was very windy and it was definitely a north facing wind. This means we had to paddle against a headwind in both directions – just our luck! I was hesitant to go out in the wind because I could see white caps forming towards the middle of the lake, but we decided to try since it was only calling for more wind later.
It was definitely not my favourite paddle. It was choppy the entire way back to Gold Creek. We didn’t encounter too many problems, but it wasn’t enjoyable and it was definitely more effort. We stopped at North Beach for a snack and then powered our way back to South Beach. I always hate paddling back to South Beach because you can see your final destination the entire time, so it feels like it takes forever to get there. It was really busy at South Beach and we had a challenge to land and load our kayaks around all of the people.
So overall, it was a fun, but somewhat challenging trip. It felt too short and I would like to go back in the future to do two nights. The real benefit of the trip is that it’s so close to home and unlike Widgeon Creek, the campground isn’t that busy. It’s a good option for a weekend trip and I think in the future, I may try to visit in the Spring. We had a lot of fun at Pitt Lake in late April, and generally, I think it’s a good time to camp and paddle before it gets really busy in the summer.
