Mountains

Short Version:
A stupid, grumpy Frenchwoman fails to ruin our day. Mountains. Jasper is full of mannerless oiks. Mountains. Bike Park. Mountains. Mountains.

Long Version:
We'd planned to ride in the Mt Robson Provincial Park, up to Kinney Lake, but there were 50+ cars in the parking area, so we ate sandwiches and then hauled up the Yellowhead Highway into the Rocky Mountains, where a grouchy Frenchwoman in a toll booth told us we had to pay $19.60 for every night we planned to spend in the National Park for which she was gatekeeper. Clever Wife said we were heading for Hinton, which is out the other side of the park, and we were waved through without warmth by the hag, across the time zone border and into the Jasper National Park. The town of Jasper is inside the National Park, and was absolutely chock-full of RV's, cars and buses and the tourists they'd disgorged on this last long weekend of the Canadian summer*. Many of them were, we discovered, either really rude or really unskilled at sharing a sidewalk with other pedestrians**, and after a quick stop at Freewheel Cycles for trail map and advice (this one and this one, clockwise and counter-clockwise respectively), we left.

We didn't stay long at the Wildhorse Lake campground, either, as it was $22/night, and full apart from one crappy spot near some unattractive people. Not that we'd have stayed if they were prettier. Instead, we carried on out along the gravel road, past a few spots where sizeable pickups with large trailers were parked, and found ourselves a flat spot just off the road, with a great view of snow-capped mountains, some in full sun, others with their heads in clouds. Some had distinct bands of cloud across their lower midriffs, and many had distinct rock striations, clearly visible where snow lay along the ridges. Throughout the evening, the mountains periodically disappeared behind shifting clouds, and by the time darkness fell they were hidden more often than not.

The morning was cold, and we were in dense fog until mid-morning, when the sun and a bunch of mountains appeared, surprising with their closeness and their looming presence. We had a crack at navigating our way out of the backroads area via a different route to the one we'd come in on, and were well and truly befuddled by the time the Park Ranger happened by and set us back on track, with bonus directions to the Hinton Mountain Bike Park, which turned out to be a small area, but big on fun. The few trails each embodied a different style of riding, and each was an extension of part of the skills training area near the carpark. The pump track and dirt jumps fed into the Flow Trail, for example, and the structures in the Skills Area were smaller versions of those found on the Slopestyle and Freeride trails. We had a crack at pretty much everything, riding and re-riding stuff until we could complete without carnage (or with aplomb, depending on the structure). Nene turned out to be a drop-off maestro - certainly she was a lot less wobbly on landings than I, despite the shorter travel bike - and struck up a conversation with a local rider while I was cursing my ineptitude after a particularly heavy landing. Grant is an avalanche forecaster in winter, helicopter-based firefighter in summer, and turned out to know Nick and Jailin, who we'd met at the Dunster Old-Time Family Dance (Hi Grant! Hi Nick and Jailin!). He also knew of a pirate trail in the National Park, and gave us directions and instructions on how to find it, which we would have listened to more attentatively had we not been interrupted by a young chap faceplanting off one of the bigger dirt-jumps. We ran over, made him wiggle fingers and toes before granting his request to get his helmet off, and then poked and prodded his bruises just for fun and to make sure there were no broken bones.

By the time we left the Park, both of us felt like we'd learned new and improved existing skills, which was pretty cool. The dirt-bike crowd had vacated the wilderness area, so we nabbed a spot which was much better in terms of access and surrounds but worse in terms of view and rubbish: half-burned plastic bottles lay near till receipts and scraps of duct tape***; cans and their lids nestled into long grass alongside a collection of empty propane cylinders. We cleaned up the worst of it, and settled in for cake, tea, popcorn and apples while looking at the yellowing leaves; the towering mountains; and the deer in the woods, which had a bright white and very bushy tail. She looked delicious.











* = Technically, it's actually the first long weekend of Fall, but it's generally seen as the harbinger of the end of Summer, heralding as it does the start of the school and university years, and the end of the golden weather

** = Tempting as it was to see how well they'd share a sidewalk with the Reaper, we figured we might find ourselves violating some "Thou shalt not run over tourists with more money than you" National Park rule

*** = Duct tape. DUCT tape. D-U-C-T. Not duck. Idiots.