Revelstoke National Park

On the August long weekend, my friend, Helen, and I went backpacking to Revelstoke National Park. Seems like this is becoming a yearly thing for us - not last year since I was Ironman training. The other two weekends we ran into a British couple, but there weren't in Revelstoke this year. Revelstoke is northeast from here on the way to Banff. It is grizzly bear country. There are grizzly bear statues entering into the town. Lots of shops,restaurants, etc have "grizzly" in their names. We were a little spooked. We chose to hike in the National Park since we figured it would be a popular spot with more people, therefore, less chance of bears around. I did take my bear spray and my bear bell (thanks Aunt Polly:)).

We hiked into Eva Lake which was not quite a couple of hours. There was one other party there who was a family from Kelowna. They had a couple of kids and this was their first backpacking trip. The kids loved it and were great to hang around.





The next day we did a day hike up to Jade Pass and onto Jade Lake and back. There was some snow to go around and the area was quite open so we just went off trail down to the lake. There was one area that wasn't very open but we made lots of noise and didn't see any wildlife. Not a wise thing to do, but it really was quite an open area. Helen had thought we were going to hit the trail again, but I had assumed she could see that the trail went around the other side of the lake. A little miscommunication there, but we managed. My response was "You want a trail??" The footing off trail is harder and took more energy so we were tired by the time we got back to our campsite. I guess another "hiking with Kath" story, but there were no mishaps.



The bugs were bad, but there was a small shelter there if we wanted to be in there. It was relaxing by the cold lake. I know it was cold as I washed in there. No one else joined me. Cold wimps :)! The alpine flowers were in full bloom. The marmots there are well fed as they were quite big. We had a short hike out, but another awesome trip again!!!