Day 5

Day 5 – 8/22/2016

A rainy, cold day :(. We planned a few hikes today, but had to change plan as the rain just kept on coming down. Coupled with 40 degree (F) temperature, it wasn’t very pleasant. Pictures on this page were mainly taken with iPhone as I didn’t want to get the Nikon soaked.

Maligne Canyon

Maligne Canyon is very deep with its deepest point near the 3rd bridge at 55 meters, it’s also very narrow, in some areas it’s even smaller than adults’ arm span.

Maligne Canyon to Sixth Bridge – 3.7km one way, easy

There are six foot bridges on the Maligne Canyon trail, the first four bridges offer the view of deep and narrow limestone slot canyon. The next 2 bridges were further away, most of the tourists usually turn around after the fourth bridge. Jie decided to turn around and drive to the sixth bridge parking lot and let the three of us continue on with the hike along Maligne River. Not sure it was a smart decision for that day (LOL!), as it kept on raining and raining, and for quite a while, we were treading in deep mud. It was sticky, slippery and scary!!

Maligne River

Medicine Lake

The plan for the afternoon was to visit Maligne Lake. There seemed to be quite a hype about Maligne Lake, and I was excited about it. On the way to Maligne Lake there was an easy access to see Medicine Lake, so we stopped. You can see the weather was quite miserable. Medicine Lake, I later learnt, is really not a lake. It gets flooded, or overflown by melting glacier in the summer. It drains from the bottom, rather than flow into a river.

The rained continued steadily and didn’t show a sign of slowing down. We were cold and soaked and decided to return to hotel and forget about Maligne Lake. I spent the afternoon washing and drying our shoes. After days of 24000+ steps-per-day of hiking and climbing, it was not too bad a thing to take a break, and better yet, a nap.

Jasper

By dinner time, it finally stopped raining. We leisurely walked around Jasper Townsite and enjoyed elk burgers. Jasper is not as nice as Banff Townsite, but there are some good eats.

Bucket List: see Maligne Lake in sunrise

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