80. Grassi Lakes

Distance: 4.2 km loop
Elevation gain: 244 m

July 25, the fourth day of our hiking holiday, Herm and I met Rachel, Naylis, Skyler, and Allie in Canmore and we hiked Grassi Lakes loop together.
The falls which could be seen from the parking lot were our first destination.

It was a real hiking trail, not an abandoned road and after the falls we had some rugged climbing to do.

At the first lake we took a group picture.

At various spots on the trail there were rocks to climb and caves? to explore.

The second lake was even prettier than the first.

Then we started a steep climb up broken rock steps to find the petroglyphs which were supposed to be above us.

Allie, Naylis and I decided to continue to the top even though the wind threatened to blow us away.

At the top we looked over the edge to see the reservoir

and back over the way we had come to see the lakes, trail, canal and Canmore in the distance.

We went down again quickly as the wind was unpleasant.

A beautiful hike almost in the middle of town.

We took the easy road back to complete the loop.

Rachel and the kids had decided to count all the different wild flowers they could spot, a game we gladly participated in.  We noted about 40 kinds. One of the most common and most special was the wood lily.

According to Allie, this was one of the best hikes she has done.

79. Asulkan Valley

Distance: 15 km return
Elevation gain: 925 m

Tuesday, the second day of our hiking holiday, Marg, Doreen, Herm and I left our hostel at Field fairly early to travel to Glacier National Park to hike the Asulkan Valley trail. The weather was perfect and we anticipated a wonderful day.
The trail was beautiful, very walkable with different flowers all along. The first ones were red monkey flowers.

Higher up were bouquets of gentians.

All along the trail were spiky flowers ready to bloom. We could not find them in any of our flower books and suspect they don't grow in Alberta.

The trail started through the woods but soon opened up with views of mountains, the creek and waterfalls all along beside us.

Eventually we saw a steep moraine ahead of us with a trail on top. This brought us to the end of the trail.

We continued up a little further to an outhouse and hut where we rested and sheltered from the wind and brief rain storm.

Thankfully the dark weather didn't last long.

Soon we took off our coats again, looked at the trail down the valley below us and set out for a great hike back down.