Eyes cracking open, still looks dim out there. Back to sleep, must be early. Wake again, surely it must be time to move, tho it is still quite dim out.
When we finally crawled out of the dewy tent, it became clear that the mountains and the overcast day had conspired to make it feel earlier than it actually was. We turned on Justin’s cell phone briefly, and discovered it was actually 10am already! Oh man, there goes our early start. But now that the sun was finally peaking above the gentle mountains around us, the tent could dry. It was quite humid here, and the lightweight tent I had just gotten had a rather airtight fly, so the little venting that happened under the edge of the fly hadn’t been enough to combat the condensation. The inside of the fly was dripping with it. We hung our gear on the rails of the roundpen, and got to heating water for breakfast. Justin had some vitamins and protein shakes he had brought for breakfast as well. The vitamins promised energy and focus, and with the vitamin B content in them, I didn’t doubt it! Sure enough, as we were cramming all our gear back into our bags, I could feel the buzz, like I’d just had a really strong coffee. Or three. We “saddled” up, and left the picturesque cabin, walking deeper into the mountains.
It was around this time that we discovered Justin’s phone hadn’t been all too great at saving the map we had hoped to use. It could find our location, but on a screen of white, that did little good. We still had the topo map I had bought, showing the hiking trail we were on in bold dashed lines. Of course, it showed the path we had taken off the main path in a similar dashed line, and the start of that path had been no more than a couple reflectors on some trees. And that was in the park, where they take care to mark such things. We were still in the park, but our proposed trail led us back out of Jasper park, and back into the Willmore Wilderness Area.
We climbed out of the little valley we had overnighted in, passing an established camp announced on the signs as Wolf Pass Camp. The rusty firepit ring was overgrown with grass. A sign pointed to the toilet, which I wanted to use, but I lost the trail to it in a thick stand of bush. Ah well, those bushes looked like they needed some watering. We swung our packs back on, and pressed on. The map indicated our path went over a relatively low pass, not quite breaking out of the treeline, with a small lake nestled in the top, and then down a gentle slope on the other side. there was a couple mountain ranges there, creating another bowl of a valley. Following the valley to the north would have us meet up with another dotted line, Moosehorn Trail, with a lake half a km east of that junction. That was the intended lunch spot. Then it should be an easy hike down the valley to the gravel road we came in on. We would camp somewhere in that valley, and then carry on the last handful of km to the gravel access road, and hopefully hitch a ride back to the car. All told, it looked like about a 40 km loop, give or take. We were looking forward to lunching at this lake.
We crested Wolf Pass, and the small lake nestled in its saddle turned out to be a marshy spot. We watched insects skim across the surface, and I was glad for the water purification pump I had. I know algae is nature’s water filter, but I didn’t fancy bug eggs in my drinking water. The path kept almost disappearing in the long grass overhanging it, as we skirted the edges of the pond and headed down the other side. Shortly after the crest, we passed back into Willmore. Judging from the tracks, the moose and the sheep were the only ones keeping this trail from fading away. We yelled to let the moose and bear both know that we were in their valley, and snaked down the other side. A small creek ran along, sometimes disappearing into the earth, sometimes spreading out into a shoe trapping mossy swamp. Although the day was warm, we both wore our long pants, fending off the ever hungry mosquitoes and the skin stinging branches.
Sooner than expected, we came to a well established path meeting the rough trail we had been following. In the dead and gnarled tree right before us, a weathered moose antler had been jammed into the branches. Well! That was quick, but we had evidently reached the Moosehorn. We turned left or east onto it, intending to go down valley. Justin said perhaps we ought to at least look at the lake, since it was our lunch spot, even tho it was half a km down the right turn of the trail, to the west. Might as well, we were so close! So we turned around, and went along the new well established trail, to the lake.
Or so we thought.
Wherever you are, Be There 