Lake Louise - Radium Hot Springs: The Kootenay Parkway 24th-26th Aug

Lake Louise is a town lacking permanent residents, and is split into two parts: the village consists of an over-priced pokey shopping mall and a few expensive hotels while the lake proper is a glorious mountain-ringed glacial lake with an over-priced, misplaced ugly hotel at the end. And a lot of tourists. We dumped our luggage and took 45 minutes to cycle weightlessly up to the lake like fairies, and cycled along the trail to the end of the lake. On our way back we were reprimanded for cycling by a park warden, also on a bike, after we had deliberately over-looked the no cycling sign. Five minutes later we were back in the uninspiring shopping mall, stocking up on necessities for the next leg.

The Bow Valley Parkway is allegedly the top spot for viewing wildlife in the National Parks. As we rolled our way to Castle Mountain, very slowly and quietly, we saw a coyote and another lynx slinking across the road. Noisy passing cars meant that not much else was to be seen that day.

We were welcomed by Tony at Castle Mountain hostel and sent to our separate (single sex) dorms. It was a lovely little place, the kitchen was big and the living room had windows on three sides with a fire in the centre - all very cosy. Tony, with his distinctive personality, had a far from optimistic version of the weather forecast, which predicted a few showers. As we set off, he was quite convinced it was going to rain constantly that day and snow the following day and that we would only get half way to Radium at best. Two hours later, following the Vermilion River down the valley, we were half way to our destination, albeit in on and off drizzly rain. As the bad weather meant the scenery was less of a distraction, we took lots of photos of signs instead, although Paul failed to take a photo of the most interesting one, which stated simply ‘Animal Lick’ (can anyone explain?). Lots of animal sightings were also promised on this highway, indeed we saw a few white-tailed deer, one of them being scooped up off the road by a park ranger and his pick up truck. The ride would have been a lot more enjoyable if it hadn’t been for the constant stream of speeding traffic whizzing by.

After 85km we started up our second pass of the day (it had the added plus of warming us up after 60km of downhill), and it was a tough one lasting for 10km. After a quick photo at the top, we plummeted down the other side and straight into the deserved and welcome Radium Hot Springs where we bathed our sore muscles until we were wrinkly as prunes. We were also very relieved to be leaving the Canadian National Parks and slumped down in our dirt-cheap, feature laden room in the Columbia Motel!

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