Revelstoke to Lake Louise

June 04, 2022

Revelstoke to Lake Louise

Well today was meant to be a day full of hiking and the forecast was for non-stop rain. Owen woke me up at 2:30am to tell me that Anna was taking over the bed. I got up and moved her back onto her side and then I never fell back asleep. ;( In the time I was awake a monitored satellite and weather from several different sites and had really given up on doing much today. Thankfully it turned out to be a great day and the weather wasn't nearly as bad as I had thought!

As a side note, the bed situation is really turning out to be a pain. Anna truly is extremely annoying to sleep with because I've slept with her many times. She flails around like mad and takes over the bed and hits her brothers with her flailing limbs. Not surprisingly, brothers have much less patience for this than parents do and every single day, whoever slept with Anna wakes up miserable, having got no sleep and they always wake up furious with Anna as if she has meant to be attacking the all night long. Today it was Owen's turn and he woke up a complete beast. Thankfully he got his second wind halfway through the day and changed his attitude because I was pretty concerned there for a while!

First thing on the agenda was the Revelstoke Pipe Mountain Coaster. I was 90% sure that we would not be able to do this since they close it in the rain and there was just no way it wasn't going to rain in Revelstoke this morning. But we decided to drive there anyways, just in case there was a brief pause in the rain and they let us go. Today was actually the first day they opened the coaster for the season and we were the second family in line! When I asked the guy if it was going to run, he told me they upgraded the brakes in the off season and now they can run in the rain! Awesome!

Joel was not excited about this at all. He was nervous and did not want to do it, but I knew he would have fun. This is his "I'm not impressed" look. in the gondola on the way up the mountain.

Getting loaded. You control the speed of your coaster with the handle. Push it forward and it goes faster. Pull back and it applies the brakes and slows down.

Joel being a good sport and going even though he really didn't want to!

Anna and I went double.

You can't really get pictures while you were on it but this is what it's like! The track is 1.4 km long.

In the end everyone liked it. Joel wanted to go again because he was so nervous the first time he didn't enjoy it as much as he could have, but it is $$$ plus we wanted to do some hiking so we got going.

Before we left Revelstoke we stopped and got some Bear Spray (this is Grizzly country!) and some groceries for lunch.

All day today as we drove it would pour rain for 15 minutes, then the sun would come out, then we'd see the rain in the distance, then it would clear up, repeat. All in all though, every time we needed to get out of the car (after the coaster), it was not raining!

The start of the hiking is where things started to go a bit down hill. First stop was the Giant Cedar boardwalk trail. We were really excited for this one as it was a boardwalk surrounded by the famous BC giant cedars! But when we got there the trail was closed :(. A tree had fallen across it and apparently it wasn't safe.

This is what was behind the barrier. All we got was this quick picture and we had to be on our way.

No worries. We had another hike planned just a 10 minute drive away. The Glacier Hemlock Trail was the next stop. We got there and it was also closed? We aren't too sure why! OK well we saw another trail that we had looked up while we were planning but decided we didn't have time for. We figured we'd do that one instead. Also closed! We couldn't believe it!

As we drove along that area of the highway, there were tonnes of signs saying "Do Not Stop." "Avalanche Zone." "No pulling over." And every single trail and bathroom was closed for about an hour. As the snow is melting on the mountains, this is avalanche season and while you can drive through (I guess they think if you are driving, you could avoid an avalanche if one started?), they don't want you stopped or hiking in the area right now.

We finally passed the avalanche area and pulled over at this National Parks center to have our picnic lunch. We also chatted with the guy who worked there who gave us a suggestion for a hike that was open that wasn't too far away.

These pants provided much laughs and entertainment!

Inside the Parks Center.

The Parks guy had recommended the Bear Creek Trail. We walked down, down, down to this very spraying waterfall. We all got soaked in about 2 minutes! Then we had to walk up, up, up back to Big Chungus!

Looking very wet!

From there, we got back on our regular plan and continued on towards Lake Louise. All together it was about 3 hours of driving today.

We hit the border for the time change and our clocks jumped ahead an hour mid-afternoon. Near to Lake Louise we stopped at the most gorgeous spot, called "Natural Bridge". By this point the sun was shining and it was beautiful. Seriously it was amazing. The kids loved this spot for some reason! We walked a bit away from the crowds and it felt like we had the place to ourselves!

We spent about 45 minutes there and then we drove another 10 minutes to Emerald Lake. I had been really disappointed about the weather since I figured we'd have to skip this today but I was so glad it cleared up and we got to enjoy it! It is a beautiful, turquoise lake surrounded by beautiful mountains. There's a nice trail around the lake that we walked around. Just beautiful! Once again, you only need to walk about 5 minutes away from the parking lot to leave the crowds behind!

T-shirts!

We really wanted Italian food. I looked for a place on Google Maps and this place popped up and it turns out it was perfect! Great food, a super friendly waitress, no wait for a table and it turns out it was literally across the street from our hostel!

We booked a hostel because accomodations in Lake Louise are EXPENSIVE! This was by far the cheapest place we could find at $287 per night. We have a family room so it is private and has an attached bathroom. It's simple but it will do for one night. After this our accommodations should get a bit better again!

Hostel life!