Kurt emailed his supervisor, who said that it wasn’t a problem if he wanted to take their truck, and he could just waive it off as a research trip. Sometime Wednesday night it was decided that rather than drive back the same day, we would just rent a tent and stay over the Thursday. Thus our epic journey took form.
Thursday morning, which dawned cold and wet, found all five of us checking traps to get it done quickly. We rushed back, packed our stuff, and were out of the field station by 10am (which is record timing if anyone has ever spent any significant time with all of us). Our journey began with the epic theme music from the movie Dragonheart, as we set off to Canmore to rent a tent and pick up supplies. The tent place was out of 5 person tents and had only a 3 person one. We ended up taking that one and deciding that we would also take the one that Doug and the others had. We bought more than enough groceries to last us a day and grabbed food and coffee at a Tim Horton’s/Wendy’s. We set off and quickly lost our first casualty: Kurt’s Sprite was rapidly lost to Kurt’s shoes as he was driving.
The time was passed in the car by a rousing attempt at the “headlight game.” I skipped this one out, as I felt that sleep was much more important. The next casualties were therefore only temporary and were several personal items belonging to Tracy and Crisia and only a few belonging to Kurt and Nikhil. These personal items were eventually returned to their owners as we entered the “best place on Earth” and found the home of Jesus.
We passed by all the famous developed hot springs in the area: Banff, Radium, and Fairmont. To get to these ones, the Lussier hot springs, we turned in a gravel road at Whiteswan Lake. The drive to the hot springs from there was on a narrow, climbing, windy gravel road surrounded by mountains. One side of the road ended in an abrupt cliff, the kind of which one only sees in cartoons; it seemed a little too easy to drive over the edge of this cliff, especially with trucks appearing out of nowhere coming towards you at full speed.
We finally found ourselves at the hot springs and spent the afternoon there with the other butterflyers. Unlike Banff and Radium, these hot springs were not developed. Rocks were placed in a strategic manner and a steep path with a railing lead to the hot springs, but that was the extent of it. The hot springs consisted of several shallow rock-surrounded pools of descending temperature and ended in a freezing fast-flowing river. Although this was a much more natural setting than the hot springs we had previously frequented, it wasn’t nearly as hidden as we would have liked, so there were many more tourists than we would have expected. The majority of them were from Quebec, which was very odd for me because I felt like I had come home.
Although I preferred the much more natural scene of these hot springs, I do think there is something to be valued in the chlorine and the cement of the developed ones rather than foot-tearing and slippery rocks of this non-developed one. The pools were also much shallower than I would have liked even though the hottest pool was much hotter than we had experienced before. The fact that it smelled like you were sitting in an egg salad sandwich, as Kurt put it, took some getting used to. I think I would have preferred it much more if it was cooler out and if there were fewer people around.
Since there was a fire ban, a lot of our food suddenly became useless. Instead, for supper, we teamed up with the butterflyers and put cans of food and sealed bags of hot dogs in the hot springs to warm them up. The heat did a little good for soups and beans, but we had to eat the all-beef and tofu hot dogs cold. It was a surprisingly satisfying meal after all our energy was sucked away by the hot springs.
Before the butterflyers left, there was an all out burr war. I’m pretty sure Kurt lost this one. This was mostly due to Crisia standing quietly behind him and chucking them at his back. Soon, we said goodbye to the butterflyers and hastened to a nearby campground to set up our tent. We decided that we would come back to the hot springs at night when most people would have left.
After setting up our tents and hanging around the dock near the lake at the campground, we headed back to the hot springs. There were fewer people there, and as it grew dark, it became almost pitch black. The only light we had to go by were the stars, which were absolutely breathtaking. This was what made the trip totally worthwhile. The water was much more pleasant, as the air was cool, and we had but to lean back, and we would see more stars than any of us had ever seen in our lives. Since there were no large cities anywhere nearby, even the Milky Way was discernible as a large cloud-like stream. Since the Perseids were also just beginning, we were able to make out several shooting stars. It was simply magical.
Leaving late into the night was a feat in itself, as the rocks seemed even slipperier, and we couldn’t see them properly. Nikhil probably fractured his toe. We managed to change right there and leave without leaving anything behind; a few of us did manage to take some of the burrs away with us that were still being found a day later after laundry had been done.
We came back to our tents, and all of us hung around in one tent for a bit until we decided that we were much too wiped to do anything but sleep. We all wished that we could have had campfire to converse by, but without its comforting light, we were just too tired to continue. Crisia and Kurt left for their own tent, and Tracy and Nikhil quickly fell asleep, as evidenced by the snores that the rest of us could hear before we ourselves fell asleep.
It was quite cold throughout the night, but I slept comfortably with the hood of my sweatshirt over my ears. I awoke periodically since sleeping on the ground is rather painful to someone as bony as me. I also awoke once to Tracy’s infamous sleep-talking. She yelled, “Kurt, where are you?” and then muttered something under her breath and then “Jackass.” I was actually surprised that Kurt didn’t answer back, and it took all my effort not to laugh out loud. Everyone’s sleep was then broken several times by a child in the next campsite over who threw a seemingly endless tantrum over at least three separate occasions. She would wail and scream for her mommy, and both her parents would try to shush her in vain. Apparently, Tracy, awake this time, muttered something about wanting to “cheese” their family.
Not too early in the morning, long after the family with the crying child left, we packed up our stuff and had muffins and bananas for breakfast. We had determined that even though we had spent the entire summer together, we still did not have a group picture. It was sad because we had realized that there were only two weeks more for us all to be together and less than a week until our supervisor came to teach a field course, and then, we would have a very limited amount of time in which to just simply enjoy ourselves as a group. We, therefore, made several attempts to time a group photo by the lake, and you can see our best attempt along with a few other pictures here.
We then started our trek back, and soon all of us, except poor Kurt who was driving, had fallen asleep. We stopped for ice cream in Radium and had a late but good lunch in Canmore after dropping off our tents and soon found ourselves back at the field station where it was still cold and raining.
So ends our epic quest.
