Glacier National Park

Wow, Montana is beautiful! Just driving the Going to Sun road is an experience in itself.

Click on the pic for more...

Canadian Rockies

Day 1 (Sunday)

We fly into Calgary on Saturday, rent our gray Ford Taurus and drive 1.5 hours to Banff which is a cozy and interesting little town. We walk a bit, check out the restaurants, get campsite reservations and then start looking for our hotel, The Juniper which turns out to be just outside town proper. Once we've lugged our stuff up, we see our beautiful hotel room and wow, we have our own personal view of Mt Rundle.



The next day, we wake up soon after sunrise (helped by the 2 hour time diff.) and take some shots of the mountain. Then, we pack up and get ready for my first 2-night backpacking trip. We leave the car at Sunshine Village Ski resort parking and start off our 12 km hike to our Egypt Lake campsite. I'm surprised at the snow on the edge of the trail, I didn't know we were going to be backpacking in such cold conditions. Luckily, it's an easy trail to follow and counting down km's is so much more fun than counting down longer miles. We start at about 5440 ft elevation (higher than Mt Marcy's peak!). Along the way, we stop at a nice creek and see some great views at the clearings.




But, the best part of the whole hike was beholding the vistas at Healy Pass at 7700 ft. Wide open views of snow-capped mountains, alpine lakes and larch trees with bright orange leaves, what more could you ask for?

Oh, I know, a grizzly bear! Almost every party we met while hiking up to Healy Pass warned us about the grizzly bear up there, so we were excited and a little apprehensive about seeing and photographing it. But unfortunately, we missed it. :-( The last party who saw it said it was on its way down the valley, away from the trail. Oh well...




We start hiking down the other side of the pass towards our campsite, which is about 5 km away. Along the way, we meet a guy hiking alone, walking with an aluminum cookpot in his hand, he told us that he'd seen the grizzly the day before. About 3 minutes after meeting him, we learned what the cookpot was for, because he had started banging it, warning the grizzly that he was coming, hehehe.

That's Egypt Lake viewed from the top of Healy Pass, so about 4 km more to go.


We meet a park warden while we're filling up our water bags at a creek. She's surprised that we have a tent, sleeping mats and sleeping bags in our small packs, and we've enough to be warm for the night. She was right to be concerned though, it was about 32 degrees that night, literally freezing. We were the only tent at the campsite (it was a fall weekday after all) and there were a couple of people at the little shelter. I bet they had a warmer night than we did, since they had a stove in there... jealous, jealous me...

Being bear country and all, we had to cook and eat at a picnic area away from our campsites. We even had to hang up all our food and trash so we'd be safe from bears. The solitude and views made for a great campsite.

Day 2 (Monday)

After a cold and fidgety night, I declare that I don't want to spent another cold night at that tent site, I suggest that we camp at the lower campsite that we'd seen instead. We figured that nobody would mind since we had reservations for 2 nights and that if that campsite was full, we could still hike all the way out.

So, we go on a day hike that morning to see Egypt Lake itself and a few other lakes in the area. Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out how to get to Mummy Lake (the trail signs were confusing) and since we didn't bring lunch and needed to hike down to the lower campsite that day, we had to give up and go back to camp. We did see a few nice places:




After lunch, we pack up and start to hike back up to Healy Pass. We take a little sidetrip up the ramparts and see some really fabulous views:




When we get to Healy Pass, Sachi suddenly exclaims that he sees the grizzly! I'm shocked since it's just a really tiny, basically a moving spec at the bottom of the valley. It's somewhere in the picture below, the arrow should help, hehe.



The whole day, we don't see anyone on the trails, and we eventually get to the lower camping area. There is nobody there and we get to pick the best campsite, right beside a creek. So, we can wash up, refill and sleep to the sound of the rumbling creek. Very nice! Plus it's much warmer too, hehe.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

It rains during the night. Luckily, we're nice and dry inside the tent. The next morning, it's very cold and when we look out of the tent, it's snowing! And by the time we're packed up and ready to go, we have an inch of snow and it's still falling!




We have a nice relaxed 2km walk on the virgin snow, along with some birds and some 4-footed, 3-toed animal that jumps, hehe. We see all the same sites on our walk back, but this time under a cover of snow. Remember the earlier bridge picture? Here's what it looked like coming back:



When we get back to the car, we decide we look clean enough (and smell decent enough) to go straight to lunch, at Grizzly House! There, we have one of the best meals I've ever had. We start off with an appetizer of raclette, and then I have my Alberta beef fondue and Sachi has various game which we grill on a hot rock. We have venison, buffalo and wild boar. The portions were kinda small so we decided to get another order of meat and the server recommends caribou. Wow, that is good meat, very tender and tasty! I even get my own portion, that's how good it was, hehe.

Next, we're off to Moraine Lake where we stay at a nice (but expensive) lodge just beside the lake.



We take some pics of the lake, though it's not as blue in the fading light. We also climb up the literal Rockpile to get some better shots. And then we get a nice, classy dinner at the lodge where I noisily drop my fork into my unusual plate a few times, drop some food while taking it off Sachi's plate, and generally being uncultured. :-)

Day 4 (Wednesday)

Sachi gets up early and takes some fabulous classic sunrise pics of Moraine Lake:



Me, I decide to spend a couple more hours in my warm and soft bed. We pack up and head up the Icefields Parkway where we stop at a couple of nice places, the best of which was the blue, blue, Peyto Lake



After about an hour of driving, we get up to Athabasca Glacier where the wind is so strong, they cancel the tour right after ours... we barely see anything through the blowing snow... But it's still really cool that I get to step on a glacier..



We spend the night at Lake Louise Inn and get some laundry done to get ready to go camping the next day.

Day 5 (Thursday)

We catch the first morning shuttle to Lake O'hara. It's a sensitive alpine area so they don't allow private cars, just a limited number of people via shuttle, or if you're up to it, a "short" 9km walk.

We get dropped off at the campsite which about a 10 minute walk to the lake itself. Unfortunately, the weather turns from bad to worse that day, so we decide to skip the hike and just do a walk around the lake. Bad idea... we get soaked, but luckily, we end up at the Lake O'hara lodge where it's open to the public for afternoon tea. We get to warm up and dry up by the fire, and even read books from their interesting library for a couple of hours.

We then walk back to our cozy little campsite and take advantage of the facilities which include a relatively nice (but non-flushable) bathrooms, manual water pump, covered eating and cooking area and sink. We make a wood fire, then dinner, and then, almost lose the dinner because we put it on top of the stove where the heat promptly melts the bottom of the packaging. :-)

There are a few other people at the site but few enough that we get to keep a table to ourselves and get to hang our stuff to dry on the walls. After dinner, we hang out at the camp where it's cold but cozy and watch Appleseed on the PSP. Unfortunately, it runs out of batteries before we finish the movie and my DS won't even start because of the cold batteries. That should teach us not to bring electronics camping, hehehe.

Day 6 (Friday)

The next morning, we hear that a tree fell on one of the others' tents. We kinda heard a commotion that night but didn't realize what it was. Luckily, no one was hurt.

The day starts a little wet but get much better after we have breakfast. We decide to go on the Opabin trail. It's a great trail with some wonderful views:



The pictures can sure speak for themselves...

We take the 4:30 shuttle back to the car and drive back to Banff where we stop by Vermilion lakes. More Wows...





We then reward ourselves with a meal at Bumper's, The Beef House where I have the Rib and Ribs dinner.. :-) We then drive to Best Western where we're glad to be in an American hotel with free breakfast, a pool and underground parking.

Day 7 (Saturday)

Going home... boo hoo hoo... I guess the plane doesn't feel like leaving yet either because we have a fuel spill and have to move to a different plane. And, since they couldn't normally move the catering service because of the spill, the airplane personnel actually pushed the carts into the terminal, past 3 gates, onto our new plane. The airline attendant said that it's the first she's ever seen anything like that in the 20 years she's been flying... When we finally get to Newark, we get confused when we have to pick up our car because the bus drops us off at a different station than where we got on. We didn't realize that there were so many stations and that the parking lot was sooo huge. So I stayed with the bags and Sachi hunted down the car... So it was a tiring trip back, but oh so worth it. Really not bad for < $1000 per person, eh?

Hiking up Mt. Marcy

View Entire Mt Marcy Photo Gallery

So Sachi plans another trip up Mt Marcy for the Labor Day weekend. At first, there were enough people to warrant reserving 2 campsites. Then, people started dropping off, Olan had to work, Glenn had to go to Manila for work, Gene had visitors... So it ended up with Sachi, Enad, Raquel and me driving up on Friday night and camping, and then Allan and Jimmy meeting up with us early Saturday morning to start the hike up 5,344 ft Mt Marcy, the highest peak in New York.

At least that was the plan. There were a few kinks: Sachi had a toothache on Friday, saw his dentist who wanted the tooth to be extracted the same day, but convinced the dentist that he had a trip and so just asked for antibiotics and some heavyweight pain relievers... So it's Enad and me who will be doing the driving. Of course, Raquel also volunteered but we politely declined, hehe... We leave before 5pm, all on schedule and all is well until about 4 hours into the drive, Allan calls and can't figure out why we haven't seen a toll booth yet if we're already at exit 28 on Rt 87 and how we could have possibly gotten there so fast. It turned out that we were already on Rt 90 and going in the wrong direction for the last 30 minutes or so. So we lose about an hour and with the slight traffic got to our campsite at about 12am. Good thing the slight drizzle had stopped so we were able to set up our tents in our little campsite. That night, it's still unclear if Sachi can climb up the next day, he's in pain for most of the drive up but is waiting for the antibiotics to kick in. The next morning, he wakes up, one cheek swollen (looking like a scary Mickey Mouse), the pain has subsided but he still won't be able to join this major hike. I tell him that I'll stay with him but he eventually convinces me to go up anyway. We quickly get a heavy breakfast of cold rice and hotdogs, pack a tapa lunch in ziplock bags and meet up with Allan and Jimmy who've been waiting for a bit at Adirondack Loj, our starting point.

So off we go... Starting at 8:30 am, we face 7.4 miles and 3000+ vertical feet before we "bag" Mt Marcy. We start off on a 2 mile lope to Marcy Dam. It's a good way to warm up and we take a few pics on arrival.



We hike steadily upward till we stop for a nice lunch at around 11:30 at Indian Falls. We eat beside the stream that eventually becomes a small waterfall overlooking a really nice view of the Adirondacks.




Now things start getting serious. We've already gone about halfway but we haven't even hit the 3000ft altitude yet, I'm already dreading what looks like a pretty steep climb near the end. Allan and Jimmy are usually in the lead, they're pretty fast. Nakakainggit nga, parang relax na relax lang sila, eh ako, hingal na hingal na :-). Enad stays at the back of our group, to make sure Raquel and I don't make our escape and start back down the mountain early, hehe. We keep going, stopping periodically for a short snack, sometimes sitting down, other times standing up, so we don't have a hard time getting back into the rhythm. It's a rocky path up, big rocks, small rocks, all of them hard, some of them slippery. Some parts are also pretty wet, the maintainers have put up planks and well positioned rocks and sticks so we don't have to wade through the swampy areas. At around the 6 mile mark, we see how high Mt Marcy is in the distance and get an idea of the 1.2 mile climb that's ahead of us.



The trail starts zig-zagging up the mountain, we see Allan and Jimmy waving at us higher up the mountain. And then comes the bare rock area near the peak. This is the scariest part for me. I slide my trekking poles behind my back and start using my hands to climb up. Everyone else was walking up. Me, I was hugging the mountain side, doing push-ups nga daw, sabi ni Enad. I'm scared of slipping down and the strong wind isn't helping. Luckily, there was lots of space on to climb on the rock so there weren't people coming up behind me to pressure me. I just took my time, told myself I could do it, rested every few minutes, tried not to think about having to come back down and finally made it to the top. Wow, the views were amazing!




(I have short 360 degree movies as well but have nowhere to post them.)

Unfortunately, I couldn't really appreciate it too much because the trek down was really weighing down on me. I'd become scared of slipping/falling down a mountainside ever since my skiing accident. We rested and ate a bit, took pictures and a couple of short videos and started the second half of our journey. It was 3:30 pm then and we figured that the sun would set around 7:30 so we had to do the 7.4 miles within 4 hours or else we'd be walking in the dark.

We start down, my poles really help steady me and whenever it was too steep, I'd slide down on my butt. Once we made it down the bare rock, I breathed a sigh of relief and finally enjoyed the fact that I'd made it up Mt Marcy. I felt that the rest was doable, not easy, but at least doable now. :-)

We take fewer and shorter rest stops since we didn't really have to catch our breath anymore. The hike down was pretty tough on our legs and joints though. We never do catch up with Allan and Jimmy, they must be flying down the mountain, or maybe it's just because we're slow, hehe. Enad and Raquel have run out of water so we're really looking forward to refilling at Indian Falls. We don't get there till about 6pm. So, it's about 1.5 hours of sunlight and 4+ miles to go. We know there's little chance of making it before dark but we hurry anyway so we could make as much ground as we could before we'd have to start walking in the dark.

We get to Marcy Dam at around 7:15 and barely stop there for a few minutes before we start moving on again. Luckily, as it's getting dark, we're already on the easier part of the trail. We start using headlamps and at the same time, the sky starts rumbling. At first, it was just a light shower but when it was really dark already, it started pouring. Picture this, 3 people, at least 2 of whom are dead tired and can only think of getting home, walking, sometimes almost running, sometimes slipping, dipping shoes into mud, focused on getting to the end of the trail and the car and friends waiting to take them their campsite and dinner... And start pouring rain on them... parang mga kawawang basang sisiw :-)

Well, at 8:30 pm, we finally make it. Wet, cold and exhausted, but also jubilant. Yehey!!! Finally...



Epilogue:

On the way to the campsite, Enad notices a Vacancy sign in one of the inns, and we start thinking of a warm hotel room, warm shower, warm beds... we get to the campsite and the first thing we say to Sachi, who through his fever and the rain has grilled some nice steaks for us: "Halika na! Sakay ka na sa kotse, alis na tayo". And all he thinks is: "Gusto niyo pang umalis?". And we tell him that we're spending the night in a hotel, we're way too tired and dirty to eat... So, we pack up the steaks, pile into the car and find a motel with one vacant room. Haay, what a great idea! After warm showers, we're finally able to appreciate the grilled steak and rice dinner that Sachi had made. And the warm beds were a perfect end to the day...

The next day, we wake up with sore muscles all over and I have to limp for awhile everytime after we sit down in one place. We play slow (kasi mabagal na maglakad at masasakit ang katawan) tourist around Lake Placid, make sure we buy some Mt Marcy souvenirs, hang out at the campsite, make a nice dinner of bangus, tocino and leftover eggs, tapa and hotdogs, play some tent-to-tent PSP and turn in early so we can drive down early the next day. That was definitely a great way of spending a long weekend... I'd do it all again in a heartbeat, except the 15 mile hike part, though, hehehe.

View Lake Placid Photo Gallery

Toronto visit

Memorial Day picnic

Liempo, bangus, steaks, hotdogs, marshmallows and corn on the cob on a makeshift grill. Beautiful day, friends, badminton... What more could you ask for?

Backpacking in the Catskills (Memorial weekend '05)

Challenging 2 mile hike up Peekamoose for a fabulous view and longganisa lunch. 5 miles down the peak, up Table mountain and down to our beautifully secluded campsite near the river... Rain falls.. Huddle under a makeshift tarp (made from a poncho and trekking poles), and later in the Happy Tent with beer and moths... Sleep to the pitter-patter of rain till 9:30 am. Glorious rainless morning, grilled hotdogs on tent pegs and Swiss Miss... A pretty darn good way to spend a weekend, donchathink?

Arizona Day 4 - Sedona, Arizona (4/17/05)

Again we're up at 5am, but this time it's because of a damned wrong number! (I think it was better when we had no cell phone service like at the Grand Canyon, hehe). For once, we start the day slowly by watching a little tv since we're only planning to do a little walking around uptown Sedona before heading for the airport. But then, we see some info about Tlaquepaque, a cute little shopping village within town and decide to checkout earlier. So, we pack up, get breakfast, load the car, and forget to checkout!

We first drive to Airport Mesa, take a few pics and try to feel the vortex . There were some people holding hands, praying at the site since it's supposed to be a spiritual vortex of sorts. And since you asked, I felt nothing and saw no white lights... :-)
Then, we drive to Tlaquepaque, walk around the little town, see the galleries, go into a few shops, and most importantly, take lots of portraits with our now favorite prop, my new fedora hat bought from an Indian Trading post on the way from the Grand Canyon. We're so glad we decided to visit this place rather than going to touristy uptown Sedona.

We have a nice outdoor lunch at a Mexican restaurant, say it with me: yummy chimichanga, yummy chimichanga... :-)

Our vacation is now almost at an end, we drive to Flagstaff airport, checkout of the hotel by phone (hehe), fly to Phoenix, then get on the redeye to Newark. While boarding, a woman starts choking and the flight attendant keeps doing the Heimlich maneuver on her, she really doesn't seem to need it beause she can kind of talk. Anyway, she's better in a few minutes but we're delayed leaving and eventually arrive at 2am to home sweet home, New Jersey. :-)

Arizona Day 3 - Sedona, Arizona (4/16/05)

I didn't plan on it but I guess my subconscious decides to get up at 5am (again) for some sunrise pics.
It's a little too early when we're done taking pics so I take a nap before we get some hotel breakfast. Next, we drive back up winding Rt 89 (it's far less scary in the daytime) to West Fork trailhead. The trail is a mostly flat 8mi round-trip hike into a canyon following a creek with about 11 creek crossings each way. The first time I crossed the creek on the logs, I almost had to go on all fours on the logs because I was scared of falling off, but by the end of the hike, I was just bounding through the rock crossings. Fun!
The hike is really nice, we stop for lunch at a secluded little area on the creek. People coming through probably thought we were weird, having a curry rice lunch with chopsticks, hehe. We rest a little bit, I wade into the creek and take some pics:
At the 4mi mark, the canyon becomes filled with water for a little ways. Other people go on for many more miles wading and swimming. But our trail ends here, so we turn around and walk back the way we came. We walk a lot faster than on our way in, hoping to make it back to Sedona for the sunset. Of course, because we're in a hurry, we make a few mistakes like getting turned around (hey! is there another Rock Slide on the trail??) and losing the trail (hey! why are those people way over there??). :-D

We do make it back to Sedona by 5pm and drive to Red Rock Crossing to take pictures of Cathedral Rock. It's a wonderful site for sunset pictures, as evidenced by the number of photographers we found there. You'll see what I mean from the pics we took...


And so, another eventful day ends when we shower and change for an excellent steak dinner at Redstone Cabin.

Continue to Day 4.