Saturday, July 20th, 2024, 0700-1700
Marvel Lake Campground to Howard Douglas Campground, mm 268.7
20 miles, Gain: 4850′, Loss: 3350′, elevation 6080′
I felt pretty fresh starting this day, but it ended up being another hard day. I quickly covered the rest of the distance to Marvel Lake and wondered why the campsite wasn’t located anywhere near it. Instead, it was in the woods with no views of anything. But it didn’t matter to me, since I arrived late and left so early. The Strawbridges were also already on the trail, probably miles ahead of me. We seemed to be the only ones for a few hours. But promptly after 9 am, on the way up to Wonder Pass, I started passing tons of people. They were coming from Assiniboine lodge and Magog campground. I saw over 40 people by the time I made it to the lodge. What a contrast from the days of only seeing other GDT hikers.
The pass was nice but too crowded for my taste. There were also several helicopters flying by to drop of campers, so it didn’t feel like wilderness much, despite all the incredible mountains around. The fancy lodge certainly catered to a higher clientele than the likes of me. They offered a tea hour in the late afternoon, but it was still early morning, so I slid right by. I paused long enough to admire the views of Mt Assiniboine, the Matterhorn of the Rockies. I’d spied it 2 days earlier from Northover Ridge. It looked as though it towered more than 1K’ feet above all the surrounding mountains. It also had a lot of flanking glaciers. I bet it was a fun technical mountain to climb.
I was planning on taking the 1 mile side trip to Magog lake campground for more views, but then thought better of it. The miles were coming so slow and hard, I figured I better reserve my energy for the remainder of the day…I still had more than half the miles of the day yet to hike. I didn’t think a 20 mile day could be so hard but GDT 20’s felt like 30s on other trails.
Leaving the Assiniboine valley, I walked through a gorgeous wide meadow, then past Og lake. I was going to stop there for an early lunch but decided to press on, since there were so many people hanging around. A quick glance at my map showed tons of creeks flowing along the route, one less than a mile away. I assumed there would be tons of water in the next valley, as there had been in every valley thus far. Wow did I get it wrong! I went all the way down for miles, finding no streams. The terrain was an odd mix of rocks and lumps of earth jutting up, creating a sort of mogul- like jungle gym. Any water that fell or melted seemed to seep into all the holes and just disappear.
Finally I read through the nearest waypoint comments and realized my mistake. There were multiple notes about the area being dry from Og lake to beyond the next pass. If that were true, I was screwed. I had only half a liter left and needed a lot more before the upcoming hot climb. I caught Georgie and Vince as they were taking a long lunch break. They offered me some of their water but I refused. I’d made the mistake and I was determined to fix it myself.
Luckily the nearest lake, which comments from previous years said was either yuck or bone dry, was still containing gloriously cold and clear water. I refrained from diving in head first and just collected some water for a long lunch. There was only 1 lone pine tree for shade but it did just the trick. Later I went for a dunk, finding the water so extraordinarily cold but absolutely perfect for the scorching heat. The temperature had risen to near 90. What a blessing to find this lake just before the big climb. At least I felt cool for the first mile.
The remaining miles up Citadel pass kind of sucked. It became very steep, which combined with the heat, made me very unhappy. I passed a couple with a dog walking slowly behind the owners and immediately thought about how the dog must be struggling in the heat… I’ll get back to this. I dealt with the last half mile of steep trail by hiking to a shady spot, stopping for a minute to cool down and calm my breathing, then hiking on to the next shady spot to repeat my break. The mile up took 36 minutes and a few curses. There were a few shallow lakes near the pass, but as I was only 2 miles from camp, I pushed on.
The last 2 miles dragged on. I passed a bunch of people going the other way, wondering where they were all headed… Porcupine camp? It was one that didn’t used to require a reservation but I’d just read a sign new this year, saying it now did. I knew of several GDT hikers that were counting on that site to get through the section. I wondered if they’d be ok staying there without a reservation. Probably so, but with so many other people heading there, it seemed like it would be crowded.
Finally at camp after another long and brutally hot day, the only tent pad left was the one directly in the sun. Screw that. Luckily the Strawbridges had a nice site with a pine duff area to the side… and in the shade, most importantly. Woody could have the last tent pad all to himself, since I knew he’d be getting in after the sun departed. I was so happy to have a small single person tent that could fit anywhere. I’d experimented with the Parks Canada tent pads and was certain that 2 Zpacks Plex Solos could fit on one pad…easily. My tent could also fit just to the side of a tent pad… technically not legal but we’d at least paid for 2 sites and weren’t exceeding the 4 person per site limit. Averaged out, we were only 2 to a site, but sometimes 3 and 1. Ironically, there was a family on one site that had one giant tent and 3 kids…5 people in total, so they too were sort of “breaking the rules”. Fortunately there was no one there counting and all us campers were chill about things.
This campsite was one of the few that was completely full that night, but it also had only 5 sites. I’m sure its close proximity to Sunshine Ski village (and therefore Banff) also had something to do with its popularity. Four of the sites were almost on top of each other, so it made for a somewhat claustrophobic experience. It amused me that Parks Canada seemed to have gone to such great lengths to preserve their backcounty, but in doing so, no one really got a backcountry experience. It felt more like a commercial campground in the front country, especially with 5 kids running around. But the 2 families were incredibly nice and shared a bunch of their treats with us. Plus the kids were having so much fun enjoying the outdoors, I was just glad to see them playing in the dirt and not on their phones.
The mosquitos didn’t care about the heat and sun. They came straight for me as soon as I started setting up and didn’t relent all night. This was the buggiest campsite the whole trip. But again, after the PNT, I’d learned many tricks to be able to ignore or escape them. I went for a swim to wash off all the sweat and then donned all my protective layers to cook dinner. The 2 families had one of those canister -powdered bug repellants, which worked wonders to clear the area around the picnic table. We had a nice time hanging out, right until the couple with the dog appeared, breaking their bad news to us.
Awkwardly, they led with “we disposed of the body over in the meadow near a tree.” I sadly kind of knew what they were talking about, since I’d seen the dog struggling, but the rest of the people thought they meant the body of a person. Everyone sat there with open jaws and blank stares for a bit. Then they clarified that their dog had just died and they couldn’t carry it, so they were going to hike on to Sunshine and hoped to get a helicopter to retrieve it the next day. It was very sad, but also a bit disconcerting for all of us camping there, since the body could become a bear attractant. They did have the dog recovered the next day and an autopsy showed that it was suffering from a lung hemorrhage. I thought the heat had done it in, which was not the case thankfully, but it certainly didn’t help. Between the heat and smoke, it didn’t seem like maybe even we should be out there.
