After a marvellous, camping breakfast of french toast and coffee, we headed back to the beautiful Emerald Lake. The weather was good (enough) and we'd wanted to rent canoes on the lake ever since seeing them when we walked around it yesterday. So today was the day....
Marina opted out of canoeing, citing the River Trent White Water Rafting incident as her excuse (and a general desire to stay dry!) so a single, Canadian style canoe was rented for Martin, Bekky and Jack, with three single paddles. Officially we had an hour, but in reality it was more like an hour and a half by the time we got back.
It was much quieter at the lake than the day before.... blissfully serene in fact as we glided easily across, staying close to the back most of the time so that we could complete a full circuit. Every now and then, we stopped paddling and allowed ourselves to become immersed in the near silence and the magical beauty of the genuinely emerald green water and the surrounding mountains. I do hope the photographs do this place justice....
We survived one near disaster.... Jack got a bit casual with his paddling and... dropped his paddle into the water....my what drama, we could have all died if it hadn't been for Martin's quick thinking. Well OK then, it would be a shame for this whole holiday account to lose credibility due to a very small amount of exageration so the truth: Jack *did* drop his paddle... but that was about as dramatic as it got... although the canoe did *wobble* a bit as Jack reached out to recover it :-)
After canoeing, we drove a few kilometres to Takakkaw Falls. "Takakkaw" means "magnificent" in the Cree language and this 200 metre plus waterfall was deserved of the name. We walked up to the base of the falls and Martin continued up the steep hillside a hundred feet or so to be right along side the waterfall as it crashed down the cliff face. As per everywhere in the park, with its 28 peaks at over 3000 metres in height, the scenery was awesome, with mountains and glaciers all around us.Our plan after Takakkaw Falls was to find somewhere nice and sit and read our books. We headed up to Wapta Lake, which coincidentally was by the start of the route up to Lake O'Hara. The Lake O'Hara environment is "fragile" and so the number of visitors are limited. If you're happy to hike the 7 miles to it, you're free to do so but otherwise there's a bus service which takes a strict quota of visitors each day. We arrived with the bus there, apparently due to leave soon. But due to an inordinate amount of indecision we managed to miss it! So Lake O'Hara will have to remain on the list of places to see another day....
Having missed the opportunity to chill out at Lake O'Hara, we couldn't think of a better place to be than back at Emerald Lake, so we headed back there and hiked part way around the lake, found logs and stones to sit on, and read our books. After a while, Jack challenged Martin to a game of chess and.... quite at odds with the usual result, Martin actually won (and is taking the opportunity to document this small miracle here!).
We went back to the campsite with food in mind and chose to use the "camp kitchen" again, complete with its nice warm stove. Since it wasn't raining like the day before, the kitchen was empty when we arrived. The fire was also out so Martin made like Ray Mears and got the thing blazing away again. We were joined by a Canadian couple from Edmonton, who were very friendly and (massively) chatty.
Tomorrow we head for Banff National Park....
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| Columbian Ground squirrel. |
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| 3/4 Woolleys take to the waters of Emerald Lake..... |
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| And an hour and a half later, back they came.... |
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| Takakkaw Falls |
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| View from the foot of the falls.... |
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| We relocated back to the tranquil shores of Lake Emerald for the remainder of the afternoon..... |
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| Just possibly an Osprey |
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| Back at the camp ground we used the "camp kitchen" to keep warm and out of the rain. |
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| Jack made like Ray Mears and carved skewers which would later be loaded with marshmallows. |