Mount Edith Cavell

Yesterday, David and Tricia left to continue their journey toward Vancouver and today Grandma and Grandpa Gerhard were heading south for Radium Hot Springs and Invermere. Yesterday David and Tricia got a special send-off breakfast of French toast at Alpine Lodge and today we got one too. Lake Grandpa prepared some Cinnamon French toast and Cranberry Walnut French toast with strawberries and orange juice. It won the award for Best Camping Breakfast – ever!  AND – we got to use their fancy shower - Best Camping Shower. It was an award winning morning.

Even when we don’t have to make breakfast and clean up, the mornings seem to disappear quickly. Today, our plan was to go see Mt. Edith Cavell up close. It was a windy drive up to the trail head with lots of switchbacks and poor Evelia was not doing so well in the car, but we made it up there and had a really good hike.

Mt. Edith Cavell

Adam and the kids along the trail

On one side of the trail was Mt. Edith Cavell and the glacier lake. This was on the other side.

Matthew taking a picture of the Angel Glacier and the glacial lake at the bottom

The Angel Glacier

The Angel Glacier from another angle

Maligne Canyon

We tried our hand at a campfire breakfast this morning and between our cooler and Dave and Kathy’s, we came up with scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and campfire toast. It was quite good and we had a nice morning around the campsite.

Once we had prepared breakfast, eaten and then done our clean up, it was getting close to noon. It takes a long time to get going when you are camping, there is a lot to do. And being in Jasper, where there are bears, we needed to make sure our campsite was bare before we left for the day. Today, we decided to check out Maligne Canyon.

Jasper Tram

July 4 was the day of the great migration to Jasper. There were three families (us, the Regina crew and our friends, Dave and Kathy and Evelia) and also Grandma and Grandpa Gerhard had booked a cabin at Alpine Lodge which was perfectly located on the other side of the highway from Whistlers Campground.

On our first day together in Jasper, we all went up the Jasper Tram.  We had a perfect day for it, the sky was clear and we could see a long way.  Once at the top of the tram, a group of us, including the littlest of the littles, climbed higher to the next summit.

View on the way up

 Looking down on the trees

Looking up on the Tram

Rachel, the Mountain Climber

Matthew, building a mountain on a mountain

Happy mountain climbers

A little free rider

The Whistlers Mountain Climbers

The Gerhard family on top of the world!

All of the Whistlers Mountain Climbers except for Grandpa

Parks Canada offers programming in the evening for their campers and tonight was a little kids’ workshop on how to start a fire. 

The little firestarters

Sorrento to Jasper

Another exciting day today. This is the day that we finally camp in the mountains. We had a 5 hr trip through Kamloops and north in to Jasper. It was a beautiful drive and since Matthew said he didn’t really feel like he was in the mountains in Sorrento, he was happy to be headed back to where we could see the snow peaks. We got to drive by the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson.

A pretty classic shot of Mt Robson

As we passed Mt Robson and started to look ahead in the direction of Jasper, we could see a large rain cloud in the sky. Fortunately, it didn’t mean any real rain for us except for a light smattering of rain on our tent after we had gone to bed.  

The view ahead of us as we got close to Jasper

Fluffy got to have his own campfire

David and Tricia had arrived from Lake Louise a couple of hours before us and so their site was already set up when we arrived.  Dave and Kathy arrived a couple of hours later.

our campsite

another angle of the campsite with Dave and Kathy's site in the background

Thanks to Farm Grandma for the sleeping bags for Matthew and Rachel’s stuffies. Here are some pics of the kids and their stuffies all ready for bed in their sleeping bags.