we travel, then walk, on a budget
This is the companion videos to our trip report detailing our 3 day and 2 night backpacking hike to Mt. Assiniboine Provincial Park. The highlights of the hike were hanging out along Lake Magog underneath Mt. Assiniboine and a perfect morning hike down from Wonder Pass to perfectly still Marvel Lake.
You can find the detailed report of our hike linked in the index below.
A different season in Virginia can make the same hike a completely different experience. It was winter the last time I visited Rock Castle Gorge. When we returned for a spring hike, we found a completely new experience.
Mt. Assiniboine is the highest peak in the Southern Continental Range of the Canadian Rockies sitting at 11870 feet (3618 m). Its pointy pyramidal shape reminds many of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, giving it the nickname of the “Matterhorn of the Rockies.” While our previous hike of the Iceline was about the experience as a whole, this hike was the opposite. Mt. Assiniboine is well worth the end to the many miles of mediocre trails.
This is the fourth entry of our Canadian Rockies trip series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted.
Sometimes a trail is about the summit or endpoint, but the ones I’ve always enjoyed the most are the trails that’s about the whole experience. The Iceline in Yoho National Park is one of those hikes. The Iceline took us onto a bench sitting under the Presidential Range and Emerald Glacier. For there, we could see the peaks and glaciers of the Waputik Range the Yoho Valley below. Once we were off the Iceline, we were then treated with green lake and roaring waterfalls. Sure there were stretches of forest, but they served more as breaks than the main course.
This is the third entry of our Canadian Rockies trip series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted.
This is the companion preview videos to our trip report detailing our day hike loop of the Iceline trail, Celeste Lake Connector, & Yoho Valley Trail. The highlights of the hike were the views from the alpine bench along the Emerald Glacier and the Presidential Range (the Canadian one of course).
You can find the detailed report of our hike linked in the index below.
The same trails in Virginia has a tendency to have completely different feel to them through the seasons. In the winter and spring, you can catch the trees barren revealing more than the tunnel of green typical of late spring and summer. This is why summer is my least favorite hiking season here. To that end, I may have a tendency to penalize a hike during summer. So I gave a local hike another shot and subsequently found it slightly more enjoyable a second time around.
Our first hike of our trip into the Canadian Rockies was The Rockwall in Kootenay National Park. If granite rock faces are your thing, you will have all you can handle on this hike and more.
This is the second entry of our Canadian Rockies trip series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted.
With COVID-19 pandemic shutting down everything, there are a lot of questions regarding if hitting the trails is something ok to do. My impression on the aspect of social distancing is to avoid other. So it’s not just a simple questions of is heading outdoors ok. Rather the question is can I go hike somewhere not many other hikers are. Remember it’s not just contact with other, but also surfaces others have contacted. You know that rock everyone likes to sit on (McAfee), probably should avoid that. This is the reason popular parks such as Yosemite are closing as they should. Not to mention how the popular parks get tramped on the most without rangers upholding infrastructure (see the damage from government shutdown of 2019, Business Insider).
So the takeaway is go hiking, but probably should be limited to day hikes in your local area on the lesser trafficked trails. With all of that in mind, we headed to an out to explore an out of the way trail we hadn’t done before. We saw only 2 groups of hikers along the 8 mile stretch, so I’d consider that minimizing the risk.
This is the companion preview videos to our trip report detailing our 3 day and 2 nights hike on The Rockwall in Kootenay National Park. The highlight of the hike were the granite walls of the Vermilion Range decorated with waterfalls and hanging glaciers.
You can find the detailed report of our hike linked in the index below.
This is a companion video to my Fort Lewis Mountain Tower Outlook via Angeline trailhead hike report.
Again, videos are still a new thing I’m playing around with and I have plenty to learn about what works and what doesn’t work. I’d welcome any suggestions as well. If you like these, please subscribe to my Youtube Channel to let me know, thanks!
On the perfect sunny day in early March, I headed out to explore a lesser traffic trail known for its steep incline. That reputation was spot on as I encountered the steepest non-scrambling and non-technical uphill among all my hikes here.
This is a companion video to my Cascades & Barney’s Wall hike report.
Again, videos are still a new thing I’m playing around with and I have plenty to learn about what works and what doesn’t work. I’d welcome any suggestions as well. If you like these, please subscribe to my Youtube Channel to let me know, thanks!