A Canadian Adventure - Day 29

Thursday 31 August 2017

Angel Glacier and Cavell 'Meadows'

Sue is today's author. Here's her take on the day:

It has been a cooler day today, partially cloudy, with a maximum of around 23 degrees. Our permit allowed us onto the Cavell Road between 8.30 and 11am, so we were up around 7.30am for a chilly breakfast of strawberries with our cereal and yogurt. 

It took around 45 mins to drive south on Highway 93A, then up the twisting and fairly narrow Cavell Road, to the roadhead. We could now see the reason for the permit system introduced for 2017; the car park was small because the area was being enlarged so is currently a building site, presumably for a larger car park.

Originally I had planned to walk route 21 to Verdant Pass, but it was 7-8 hours and some of it was pathless, so we stuck to the more popular Cavell Meadows trail. The first viewpoint looks over to the higher Angel Glacier on Mount Edith Cavell (3363m and named after an English nurse who looked after soldiers in WW1) and the lower Cavell Glacier, which overhangs Angel Lake, that has chunks of ice of various colours floating on its green water. 

The path continued behind the rocky moraine, where pika were making their homes, collecting green material, presumably to line their holes for hibernation. They have no tail, and large ears.

The trail ascended to a second viewpoint before passing meadows where the trees thinned. We had expected large flat meadows but they were all on the hillside. [Not quite our definition of a meadow! - Ed]

It got cooler in the wind as we climbed above the tree line but once we'd reached the last viewpoint, it looked easy enough to continue to another higher point. And so it went on... We eventually reached a summit at around 2564m, which gave views all around, albeit hazy, as usual. We could look across at Mt Edith Cavell, with the narrow ridge leading to the summit, and the full extent of Angel Glacier, so named due to the wings of ice that seem to project out from the main descending part. 

We shared the summit with a family from Seattle, and ate part of our lunch, before the cool wind forced us to start the descent.

It was fairly quick, as we'd taken the longer paths on the route up, so had the short steep paths to descend.

NB. As I write this, a female elk has sat down a mere 10m away in the grass and tree cover next to our pitch! More later...

At a path junction, we ran into the couple from Chicago again, who told us that they had seen five bighorn sheep after we saw them at Medicine Lake yesterday.

A large crack, not in the direction of the building site below us, was due to a chunk of Angel Glacier breaking off and tumbling down the rocks below. It was an impressive sight and a lucky one for us.

Lunch part 2 was eaten just beyond this point, where we were pestered by two ground squirrels who wanted to share the food! They were brazen, climbing up next to us and on to us.

It wasn't far back to the car park, for an early return to the campsite, where, thankfully, the keys for the food locker were on the table where I had left them this morning. We had both been worrying that they would have been taken by a bird wanting something shiny, which would have left us with the problem of having to get the padlock sawn off to access the food, and, more importantly, my sleeping bag, which was acting as insulation to keep things cool.

We had a relaxing hour or so, reading and drinking tea, from 3 to 4ish, before driving to town to restock the larder. The AG Foods supermarket was better than the small one we'd used before.

Back to the elk. This afternoon, an elk wandered through nearby, eating grass and tree shoots. When we returned from the supermarket, there were two elk walking around together, one of whom sat down nearby. She has just quietly walked off. Lovely.

Thanks Sue, that's a pretty comprehensive account of this smokey day on which we also saw Gray Jays and Clark's Nutcrackers - both known as 'whisky jacks' and notorious for stealing food from unwary visitors.

Today's first picture was taken on the drive up to the Cavell Meadows roadhead, the next two are views towards Mt Edith Cavell and her glaciers, then, after Sue is shown at 'elevenses', we are both pictured on the ~ 2564 metre summit (we can't find its name but it was our highest point of the trip to date). The final picture was taken just near our tent.

10.5 km with 800 metres ascent, in less than 5 hours. And for Martin, 4 km by the river in 22.45, featuring yellow butterflies with brown fringes, and an elk.