Feb 8

Feb 8 Bow Hut Trip

So goddamn cold.

On December 27th, Luke and I got up bright and early (tough for us) and drove out to Bow Lake. We brought both snowshoes and cross country skis because we weren't sure what we would want to use. We parked near Num Ti Jah lodge and decided on snowshoes. We took our obligatory pre-hike photo.

We started the long trek across the lake. The trail is 8km with 400m elevation gain. In the winter, once you get across the lake, you head up through a bit of forest and come out near a waterfall. You then continue through a gorgeous little canyon. And then it gets difficult.

Once you head up out of the canyon you go through some more trees, then into the open bowl under the glacier. That's about when it started to get dark. And we were getting really tired. We had seen the hut (and I had been there before in the summer) and so we knew where we were going. We got our headlamps out and made the last push up the hill to the hut. It sucked. We got there at 6:30, when it was dark out. Exhausted, we made dinner and went to bed.

The next day, we had pancakes, played crib, wandered around outside for a couple hours, and drank a whole lot of tea. It was about -25°c before windchill our whole trip, so we didn't spend a ton of time outside the second day.

If you're wondering... I got that awesome Coal hat at MEC on sale !! Find it here.

It was a full house the second night, so after our lovely rehydrated dinner of polenta and bean sauce, we played Asshole and Five Crowns with a group of boys from Edmonton.

The next morning we had a tasty hut breakfast and headed out at about 9:00am. It was pretty darn cold outside. It took two hours less to get out than to get in.