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Posted On Saturday, September 6, 2014 at
at
6:49 PM
by Alvin
We drove out of Vancouver on a clear blue day and were momentarily lost in the suburban traffic before finding our way onto the Trans-Canada Hwy. Spending the night in the lake-side town of Kelowna was nothing to write home about until we saw the lake the following morning - calm and tranquility with the Lake Okanagan casting a perfect self-reflection. We dragged ourselves away from such a pure blissful start to the morning and made some distance over Roger's Pass as we entered Glacier National Park whereby the friendly park ranger handed us a map to climb the 4-hours Balu Pass (and yeh she also handed us the Park Fee receipt as well...). We were slightly disappointed at first as the trail was mostly a walk in the forest but as we climbed further and out in to the sunshine, the Balu Pass slowly revealed its beautiful scene - a steep rocky path eventually led us up to the Pass with a viewpoint where we could look out to a few stunning glacier tongues shimmering in the blinding sun.
Having spent the night in the functional town of Golden to rest our limbs, we headed out to the picturesque Emerald Lake in the Yoho National Park. The lake lived up to its colorful name as it looked like a piece of jade lying in the sun. We walked around the lake in about 2 hours and we spent a further 2 hours hiking up to the Emerald Basin where we found the glaciers that fed water to the lake. As it was still pretty warm in the late Summer, the glaciers we saw were hollowed out by the warm sun and were just about 2 feet in thickness - yeh, danger zones to be avoided as hikers (especially children) had been known to fall in. We paid a quick visit to the only village in Yoho National Park, Field, that was packed house-to-house with B&B. Interestingly, Field was actually named after a prospecting financier who never paid up ! We also spent an enjoyable 2 hours walk (and a picnic lunch) at the Wapta Falls in the Yoho National Park where we witnessed the awesome vista of a 30 metres fall tumbling down into a turquoise lake. We headed back to Golden for the night after such a delightful day of hiking and laughing and were ready to cross the Great Divide the following day into Alberta Province and over to Banff.
