Day 5/8 - Wild camp 7km after Pass One to a Wild Camp at the low point after Pass Four
18.1km 758 elevation
Pass 2 - 202m
Pass 3 - 250m
Pass 4 - 306m
We packed up, and found our food bags untouched (thank you heyzeus) and walked diagonally towards pass two and towards a creek that I could see on my GPS map. We had breakfast and filled up our water here. We still had a few km’s of 'flat' / summer moguls to tackle before heading up Pass two. My ankles were so sore from the bashing they got the day before.
We had to navigate a few small river/creek crossings and the water was braided in sections. My shoes had started falling apart and the rough terrain was not doing them any favours. Another bluebird day getting up to pass two, this pass was very grassy and full of wildflowers. We got our first glimpse of Maligne lake which was crazy and made us feel like we kinda knew where we were but also so isolated.
Up on the 2nd pass we could see where we needed to head to get to pass 3, down and then up again. Do not head to the right up the next hill, just head straight down into the valley. This is the challenging part of this area, the mental side of it all, you push yourself going up and then you just have to go all the way down to then go back up again!
Every time we got closer to a pass I kept on thinking, that can't be it? that looks too big? there must be something smaller? Looking at my GPS we were almost in line with Spirit Island which was crazy to think about. We both have different techniques on the uphills Mich likes to go straight up and I prefer a make your own switchback kinda situation. The 3rd pass was very grassy and the wildflowers were out in full bloom when we were there.
Once up on the 3rd pass this is where we went wrong and added on a few unnecessary km. A friend of ours had done this section 2 weeks before us had said, once you are up try and stay up. Once on the 3rd pass the ridgeline continued to the right. we decided to stay high and to try and traverse this area. We ended up almost summitting another peak and found a cairn on the way. It was beautiful up this high and the views were worth it but we soon realised that we were so far off-trail that we needed to dive down and get back to the bottom of the pass to get back on trail. We had lunch before reaching the lowest section and it was one of the most beautiful lunch spots I'd ever had before. The mountains in this section reminded me of the Rockwall trail in Kootenay National Park.
The 4th pass might have been the toughest, varying terrain, a huge rock slide blocking our path, having to cross the rock slide, snow patches, super hot, very exhausted but we finally made it up there. This was a time for us to have our headphones in and just grind up the passes. We took a very exhausted summit pic of this pass because we were fucked!
As we were descending from Pass 4, we looked ahead at Pass 5 and it looked gigantic from where we were sitting and I couldn't believe my eyes when I thought we had to make it up there. But that's how I felt about every pass. We decided to set up camp so we were looking for something better than the night before. We found a section of dirt that was flat, next to a babbling brook and had a lil clump of trees nearby.
A much better camp then the night before, we weren't as dead or delirious as the previous night so we were able to enjoy our camp/dinner tonight. We had views of pass 5 from our campsite and it was kinda daunting to know that we would have to summit that big boy the next day.
Our bear hang was a lot better today, still not great tho but I knew that we were meeting our friend Hailey the next evening on the Skyline Trail so if something got into our food it wouldn't be terrible.
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