Day 6/8 - From wild camp at the low point after Pass Four to Evelyn Creek Campground
22km 894 elevation
Pass 5 - 251m
Pass 6 - 275m
Last peak - 308m
We woke up feeling tired today but it was Mich’s bday so I unpacked the bday banner that I packed and hung it in the tent.
Our dodgy bear hang survived yet another night (thank god) and we headed off for our final day of off-trail hiking aka cross country hiking. We had 2 passes to smash out today and my shoes were in a terrible state. We stuck to grass while going up this pass and once up to the top we found snow patches still.
Then it was back down again just to head back up again. Pass 6 was rough, the GPS tried to take up straight up through a creek bed, which was okay until it turned into a mini canyon and then it was overgrown forest and we were having to climb over deadfall. Honestly, it was hell... we were so mentally and physically drained by this point everything was tough.
Finally, it started to plateau and we reached two alpine lakes that I saw on my map. I've seen other ppl camping at these lakes and honestly it looks like a great camping spot except there's no bear hang.
We filled up on water at the alpine lakes and had a little snack before the final push up pass 6. Bad weather was starting to roll in, I could the low point in the ridge line of pass 6 ahead of us. However the map said that we were off trail, I now think that we should have been on the ridgeline to the right of us.
Once we reached the pass we took some celebratory photos and I tried to get us to rejoin the GPS trail. We had to head straight up to the right to join the ridge line. It was steep and almost scrambley at points. It sucked but once we got to the top of the ridge we were treated with huge vistas of Maligne Lake that made it all worth it.
We decided to bunker down a little, eat some spicy chicken Mr noodles and refuel for the last push until we hit trail again. Once on the top of the ridge we could kind of make out where we needed to go. The guide book said that we would have to scramble down a section. We didn't realise how far away it would be until we reached this scramble point and the ridge walk was very beautiful but deceivingly long.
The views from this ridge were some of the best of the hike so we took lots of photos to take it all in. We could see what looked like a pointy peak ahead of us with a cairn on top and this is where we the scramble section started and this is our junction. Once at the junction/scramble section it was very daunting trying to decide where to descend. It felt like we just had to down straight down over the boulders which is kinda what we had to do. We decided to take off our huge bags and lower them down to one another.
I tried to scramble down with my pack and and despite being a confident scrambler normally the heavy pack made me feel so off balanced I wasn't confident anymore. We also took our bear sprays out of our packs and handed them down to the person below separately. Earlier that summer I had accidently bear sprayed myself whilst on a peak so I had very much learnt my lesson.
Once down the steepest section we were able to put our packs back on and slowly head down the steep scree. We were so happy and relieved to be down the scariest part but this whole section was very slow going. With this additional peak I really think that the hike should be called the 6 Passes + a peak. The name 6 passes doesn’t cover everything that is in entailed on this adventure.
The views of Maligne lake are unreal at this point so you are constantly pinching yourself. Now we were heading towards Bald Hills, we are both very familiar with this popular day hike in Jasper. It felt like it took us AGES to get to bald hills aka back on a trail and maybe it was a long hike or maybe we were just exhausted who knows. We also had to go up just one more peak right before bald hills.
The moment that we hit trail again I will never forget. I didn't realise how taxing it is to be off trail. Now it was cruisey following the trail down onto the main sections of bald hills, past some people (we must have looked strange with our huge backpacks and weird smell). Rather than going down to the bald hills parking lot aka the Maligne lake shoreline we took the connector to Evelyn Creek on the skyline trail.
Our friend Hailey was meeting us at Evelyn Creek and I had text her on my Garmin InReach a rough arrival time. As it was Mich's bday I blew up balloons to decorate the camp table and Hailey bought us drinks. We has forewarned her that we would most likely not be in the most sociable of moods and we definitely weren't the most fun to hang out with as we were mentally and physically wiped from the last 6 days. But now we only had 2 more days and we were done!
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