Canada Part 3: Glacier NP

2022 Parks Road Trip Diary: Days 39-43

Glacier National Park of Canada isn’t very big; its main campground, Illecillewaet, is also the trailhead for the majority of the park’s popular day hikes, and that’s about all there is! But it is pure quality. The trails all lead to summits with breathtaking views, and each is one hell of a vertical challenge.

Day 39: Avalanche Crest

We arrived at Illecillewaet campground, the park’s main campground, in the early afternoon. There were only a few spots left, but luckily we nabbed one. Not a repeat of the misfortunes of USA Glacier – I guess we didn’t need to be worried after all. I’m not sure why, because the conditions were perfect for hiking the entire time we were there.

I really liked this campground. It had all the important basics like bathrooms with running water and a dishwashing station. But its real draw was the Illecillewaet river that ran just adjacent to the campsites, because the peaceful noise of its flowing water drowned out any noise from other campers. We weren’t alone, but most of the time it felt like we were.

Since the sun wasn’t setting until almost 10pm at this point of the year and this latitude, that meant there was enough time for a hike! Especially with the trailhead right outside our front door.

We decided that we would do Avalanche Crest Trail (6.2 mi, 3200 ft elev gain) because it was the shortest one out of the ones we were interested in.

Parks Canada likes to provide difficulty ratings for its hikes using the same system as ski slopes: green circle, blue square, black diamond, etc. They said this was a blue square, but for us this hike was hard (should not have been a surprise; it does gain about 1k ft per mile on the way up). Really that just made me excited to see what a black diamond would feel like.

But before I get ahead of myself, here’s Avalanche Crest:

The views up here were insanely cool. And this is what we get for a blue square’s worth of effort?! God, I can’t wait for tomorrow.

Day 40: Abbott Ridge

From browsing hikes on AllTrails in advance it seemed like there were two trails in this area that were tied for most spectacular: Perley Rock (7.3 mi, 4100 ft gain) and Abbott Ridge (9.3 mi, 4600 ft elev gain). Feeling hyped about this park, we opted for the harder one for today.

Reminiscent of Yoho’s Iceline Summit, this trail reaches a flat, open alpine area. For this hike, it was not the high point, but was a nice intermediate break surrounded by plenty of beauty.

The trail eventually leads up to the ridge which loomed over the flat area: Abbott Ridge.

But of course this is Canada where 3200-ft ascents are just blue squares, so you don’t stop at the end-of-trail sign, you keep exploring the ridge.

pretty pic of a pack of purple pinecones

No doubt this hike was a challenge, but despite its black diamond rating I’d say it’s accessible to most capable hikers. We finished in 5 hours. Black diamond was closer to the rating of how fun it was. 😍

Day 41: Asulkan Valley

Originally we only planned in being in Glacier of Canada for two nights since it seemed small, but the previous two days were too awesome to not do at least one more. So we booked another night with the ranger and set our sights on our last hike: Asulkan Valley Trail (9.0 mi, 3200 ft elev gain). We considered Perley Rock for today, but it had been a while since we’d had a rest day and subjecting ourselves to another 4000+ ft ascent seemed a bit much.

The beginning of this hike started out relatively chill, following the left side of a stream for a while. Having the shade from the forest on the left and an open view on the right was pretty nice and certainly not what you get on most hikes.

Eventually you cross that stream and are presented with a ridge that rises very steeply, directly in front of you. The moment when I realized that the AllTrails map lined up with this ridge, I felt a mix of excitement (such a cool trail) and despair (please no I’m tired).

I’ve previously commented on how difficult different levels of steepness feel since it can be hard to know what the numbers mean unless you hike a lot. Let me elaborate further:

steepness	how it feels
0 - 500 ft / mi	chill, maybe a few high steps here and there
500 - 1000 ft / mi	a solid cardio challenge
1000 - 1500 ft / mi	WHY would people subject themselves to something like this
1500+ ft / mi	a mix of pure staircases and/or mountain climbing

2100 ft / 1.7 mi = 1235. So yeah, this was a tough section.

trying to make it past the last 10% of the slog

The slog always becomes worth it when you finally reach the top and see the views. On this trail, there were some fun things on the way up as well!

nearby ice stained with the blood of dead hikers who couldn't survive the slog†

At the top we ate lunch while sitting next to the Asulkan Cabin that was built up there. It’s a place alpine backpackers can stay if they’re a member of the Alpine Club of Canada (seems cool, would totally join if I lived around here.)

† it’s actually a kind of red-pigmented algae

Day 42: Back to America

We had plans to visit Vancouver on this road trip, but rather than going directly there we decided we’d make the Washington State national parks our next stop. This would let us overlap with some friends who would be in Vancouver in a week.

Washington State has three parks on our to-visit list: North Cascades, Mount Rainier, and Olympic. We’d be visting them in that order before heading back up to Vancouver.

The morning started with a scare when we weren’t able to start our car: the battery was dead. We often leave the trunk and/or doors open as we move things in and out of the car, which means its indoor lights are on. Normally, powering these lights isn’t a problem because we use the car almost daily, and turning the engine on recharges the battery. But when you do three days of hikes with the trailhead right outside your campground, there’s no need to start your car, and this doesn’t happen. Boom, dead battery.

I looked up how to jump start a car using the area’s super slow but at least functional LTE, while Judy asked nearly everyone in the campground if they had jumper cables. We found a good samaritan and were able to get going again. Though this ended up losing us only an hour or two, it was once again a reminder of how badly our car was a single point of failure for us. Please no more issues like this 🤞

Anyway, here are some pics of the drive through Canada back into the US. I understand better now why the license plates all say “Beautiful British Columbia”. Obviously the parks are nice, but so was the rest!

cloudy kelowna where we stopped for lunch

vineyards everywhere! but i've never tried canadian wine...

When we crossed the border, the US border agents confiscated the chicken breast we bought earlier in the day during a grocery stop. 😤 Ugh, we should have thought ahead on that. It probably went straight to the garbage but I’d like to think she ate a chicken dinner that night.

It was a long drive to get to the North Cascades area so we arrived late. We found a first-come-first-serve campground on national forest land and slept there for the night. Exploring North Cascades would begin tomorrow!

post originally written 8/31, backdated to match reality