Late Season Hikes in the Canadian Rockies

Sat. 16 October: Little Beehive Lookout => Hector Lake

Another fire lookout to add to my 2010 haul. And then a visit to a rarely visited but spectacular Rocky Mountain lake – all in one day.

Every trip at this time of year is an added bonus to the hiking season. A year ago I had faced deep snow and temperatures way below zero. This weekend called for endless sunshine, but cool. So of course I couldn’t wait to leave the city and head out to Banff National Park in the mid-afternoon.

The day had started differently. It had snowed a couple of inches in Calgary during the morning, and the skies were still overcast as I left the city. But it was starting to clear up, and the further west I drove, the better the weather became.

The road-works west of Castle Junction were proceeding at full pace – it looked as if they were trying to get a lot of it finished before winter, and that they knew they were already on borrowed time. The Jasper/Icefields junction was particularly frantic with paving crews.

Mosquito Creek campsite, about 30 km north from Lake Louise, is open all year. It is a grand setting, in the Bow River valley along the Icefields Parkway. It surprised me to find that it was high enough here that the site was covered by two inches of new snow.

There were a handful of other campers here. Interesting that there were no large RVs, just – it seemed – younger couples towing small trailers, or sleeping in the backs of their cars. Then there was the author with his tiny tent.

I scraped the ground clear of snow with my boots, then quickly had the tent up, and the picnic table scraped off.

Before lighting the fire and settling down to supper, I drove back down the road, map in hand, to try to figure out the trailhead for Hector Lake. I thought I had it right – I was wrong.

It was a cold evening, with clearing skies. A half moon rose in the sky and the stars came out. I was early to bed. This time, my sleeping bag didn’t feel too warm. The extra blankets kept me warm, as long as I kept my nose under the covers. Some time in the middle of the night, a young couple quietly moved in to the campsite next to mine and erected a tent – safety in numbers I suppose.

Saturday morning was cold. There was a good covering of frost on my tent and on the car. My plan today was to drive back down to Lake Louise to hike up to the Little Beehive lookout, then to return north to explore Hector Lake.

Little Beehive is one of the most popular hikes in the Lake Louise area, and so I expected to share my travels with weekend tourists. In the end, there were not really many people on the upper pathways. What a start to a hike – the beautiful gardens of the Chateau Lake Louise, with the breathtaking lake to my left, as I strolled past the early tourists enjoying the cool morning air.

To reach the Little Beehive one takes the well-graded trail to Lake Agnes, high above Lake Louise. It was this trail which L and I first took our two girls in backpacks in the 1980’s. I made good progress and was soon at Mirror Lake. A little further up the snow-covered trail, I turned right and followed the path up to the Little Beehive summit. Of course the views of the mountain scenery were superb. Lake Louise always lives up to its reputation as a world-class destination.

The summit of Little Beehive is a flat, forested ridge, and on the end of the ridge is a square concrete foundation, the remains of the fire lookout. It seemed quite tiny, but it would have supported a comfy lookout building, before it was removed in the 1980’s. There are grand views of the Bow River Valley, but one can only just see the front end of Lake Louise and the Chateau, far below. Mt. Fairview and mighty Mt. Temple (11,624 ft.), and the soaring cliffs of Big Beehive, dominate the views. The good thing about this trip is that you have options on the return. I turned right and dropped down to Lake Agnes and the teahouse. Sadly the building was boarded up for the winter and the lake was mostly frozen over. I dropped back down to Mirror Lake via a set of steep stairs and a pretty mountain trail.

Back at Lake Louise the day had really started to get going, with crowds of tourists having their pictures taken, and a tour guide giving a talk to a group of attentive guests. Time to leave one crowded lake for another much less frequently visited.

The Bow River flows through Calgary on its long journey across the prairie to Hudsons Bay. The source of the river is the Bow Glacier, just north of my campsite along the Icefields Parkway. Below Bow Glacier sits the spectacular Bow Lake, and from the outlet of the lake, the river runs south towards Lake Louise. This roughly 50 km stretch of river runs through an almost inaccessible and remote valley floor. Hidden below the wall of glacier-capped mountains lies Hector Lake. It is just visible from the Icefields Parkway, but there are no obvious trails to reach it. There is just one viewpoint where tourists can stop to look down to the distant lake. It is the major feeder for the Bow River.

My recce the previous evening had uncovered what I took to be the start of a trail down to the lake, which lay about two kilometers from the highway. Someone had tied a red tape to a bush at a clearing by the road, and there seemed to be a snow-covered trail heading into the thick downward-sloping forest. So I parked my car and set off into the wilderness.

This seemed more to me like a game trail than a well-used path, and it appeared to be heading south, parallel to the hillside instead of downwards to the hidden river. So I decided to make my own path. The next kilometer or so was a crazy bushwhack down through a forest choked by fallen trees and a tangle of bushes. Just to be sure that I could return if I needed, I made a very thorough job of blazing the trail, using half a reel of red tape. Some future explorer will not thank me for the trail I blazed, as it wandered haphazardly down the mountainside.

Eventually I could hear the sound of a river below, and soon reached the edge of the shallow Bow River. Here a vague path followed the riverbank, and using common sense I turned left to follow the river as it wandered in a generally southerly direction through the forest. It was a typically lonely Canadian scene, which in a few weeks will be snow-covered and silent.

After about a kilometer I was relieved to come upon the correct trail leading down from the highway. I had started too far north along the road. A small sign pointed to the Hector Lake campsite, which lay across the river, on the other side of a small forested hill. I continued to head in a southwesterly direction on vague trails, across a wide valley floor consisting of dry riverbeds and a more open forest. In the distance I could now make out the edge of a large lake. A short time later I was standing on the edge of Hector Lake. There is something weird about the scale in this wilderness. What might typically be a kilometer seems about two or three times further down here. I was perhaps only two kilometres from the start of the hike here, but it felt very much further from civilization.

Hector Lake would be as popular as Bow Lake or even Lake Louise if it was more accessible. But I would suspect only a handful of people venture down here in a typical year. The shoreline is made up of either gravel or mud, with a few tree trunks lying on the edge, but generally very open. The glacial blue waters are ringed by the magnificent mountains of the Continental Divide, snow covered, and with glaciers in the high valleys. A biting, cold breeze blew across the lake, which measures about 5.3 km long and 1.2 km across. Soon it will be frozen over. I felt slightly uneasy standing in such a remote place, especially when I discovered an empty beer can on the beach. But then things looked up when I discovered a full can of beer a little further along the beach.

I followed the edge of the lake in an easterly direction, seeking the trail and the river crossing. My first plan had been to cross over the river and then follow the south shoreline to a smaller mountain lake called Margaret Lake – I had been intrigued by the name, and the setting, of this lake. But the southern shoreline was already in shade, and this looked to be much more of an adventure than I was equipped for today. When I finally reached the exit to the lake, across boggy ground, it was clear that the volume and depth of water flowing out of the lake were too much for a simple crossing. And there must have been huge floods in past years which made the whole area a tangled mess of tree trunks and streambeds and watery inlets. So I was happy enough to turn north and pick my way along a dry stream back to the trail junction.

Relieved not to have to retrace my steps up the hillside which I had so carefully blazed, I turned instead onto a good trail. This led me safely back up to the Icefields Parkway, and so back northwards up the road to my car. It was a cool day, perhaps just a few degrees above zero, but it was sunny and the mountain scenery was the best. In fact, I decided to take a short drive northwards beyond the campsite to enjoy the views around Bow Lake. In summer this is a very popular tourist spot, with views of the Bow Glacier. Today one tourist coach was leaving, and I was then alone beside the magnificent, but wintry lake. The sun was shining across the rippling waters, which must surely be frozen over in a few weeks from now.

Back at the camp it was a cold evening. Most of the campers had left during the day, and there were only three other people left, including my tenting neighbors. I walked down through the lightly snow-covered trails to the point where Mosquito Creek joins a young Bow River. It’s a great place for some classic Canadian Rocky Mountain snapshots. Getting a good fire going, I stayed warm, but was in bed early. The temperatures continued to drop overnight. My guess is that it was close to minus ten degrees C by dawn. The skies were filled with stars, with Orion and the Plough being prominent. The half-moon was bright in the sky. But it was too cold to hang around, so shortly before dawn, I was up and it didn’t take me long to pack away the tent and jump into the car. It took a bit longer for the heater to make headway on the frosty windscreen. Driving back east I turned onto the quiet Highway 1A and stopped for an impromptu breakfast in the car (a version of a “walk in the car”?).

From here it was a leisurely return to Calgary along roads which were only just starting to get busy with day-trippers out for a last trip to the mountains before the winter snows start to fall.


Statistics
Little Beehive
Sat. 16 October

Total Dist. 9.0 km (hike)
Height Gain 1675 ft.
Max. Elev. 7350 ft.
Time on trail 2 hrs. 19 mins.


Statistics
Hector Lake
Sat. 16 October

Total Dist. 5.0 km (hike)
Height Loss/Gain -/+ 200 ft.
Lake Elev. 5906 ft.
Time on trail 2 hrs. 31 mins.