Day 11: Jasper Part II

Raining Night

I woke up from the rain in the night, what started in the evening continued in the night. Sometimes stronger, sometimes less, but the rain barley ever stopped.

But overall we slept well again!

Miette Hot Springs

The Miette Hot Springs are another area of the Jasper park which consists of some Hikes and then the Hot Springs themself. Our plan was to first do the Sulphur Skyline Hike (Which I did 6 years ago) and then relax a bit in the Hot Springs.

Sulphur Skyline Hike

The weather wasn’t too good, it was 11 degrees when we started the hike. No sky was visible, just the grey of the clouds. But thankfully no rain.

Off we went, the hike is around 4 km and 700 m of elevation gain, so finally some serious climbing ;-)

At the beginning the trail leads through forests and isn’t too steep, so we make good progress in distance but not so much with the elevation. But soon, the forests open a bit up and we get some views of our goal.

After that, the climb got steeper and then the switchbacks started, this led to less distance but more elevation gain. As we got higher, there was some snow. But as we saw that the top is snowless we decided to push through. Before the final ascend starts, there is a small plateau. There we met around 20 kids that did the hike as a school activity… Most of them in sweatpants and sneakers… Canadians ;-)

Then it was time for the last climb, first there was a small snow patch which took some time to pass as it was quite slippery. After that just ~200 meters of elevation and we are done. It required some work but the views were amazing from the top.

Thanks to the hint of a fellow hiker that was already on the top and started the descent, we found a place out of the wind. This allowed for a short break, as overall the wind was crazy on top of the mountain.

Fuelled by the motivation to take a break in the hot springs, we made our way back down.

Miette Hot Springs

After we were back at the car, some light rain started… We were so thankful that we were able to hike dry! The Hot Springs itself consists of 3 hot pools and 2 cold pools, we stayed for around half an hour and I did a quick swim in one of the cold pools after around 15 minutes. Then it was time for a shower and after that we really felt like new born.

Jasper

We went back to Jasper and it was around 16:15 when we arrived. Our plan was to do some laundry, but we realized that the place was already closed. So we do it tomorrow.

After that we stayed a while at Tim Hortons to have some hot drinks and enjoy the free Wifi. I used it to upload the last two days of the blog and then we also did some more planning for the USA portion of our trip and booked some Hotels.

For Dinner we went to Famoso Neapolitan Pizzeria, which was a good option and we had some delicious Pizza.

Now we are back at the camp ground and the rain is coming and going, so we use the shared & roofed area again. There is a furnace, which provides some heat.

Pictures

Activities

Hike: Sulphur Skyline Trail