We're in Hot Water Now

Short Version:
Mountains, some of which are a bit old. Clean! Warm! Mountains. Destroy the French.

Long Version:
We'd stopped at the Info Centre before we left town to enquire about weather forecasts and campground availability. The woman there explained to us that a Park Pass was needed not just when staying overnight, but for anything over and above stopping for gas, which we'd kind of figured out ourselves, but were pretending we hadn't. She also knew exactly who we meant when we told her a grumpy Frenchwoman had told us the overnight thing*. We had a plan, though, and it didn't involve paying for a Park Pass today, so we decided to take our chances and go to the Hot Springs without one.

The Miette Road leaves the Yellowhead Highway not far inside the Jasper National Park's eastern border, and winds its way up into the mountains past the Punchbowl Falls** and over a pass which affords one some pretty neat views down the Fiddler River and across the valley to the Ashlar Ridge. Huge and dark grey, this ridge is - according to the helpful informative sign - somewhere in the vicinity of 360-million years old. Makes the rest of the rock of the area, at around 150-million years old, seem youthful, and renders laughable any attempt to speak of human activity in the region as being long-standing. The Hot Springs carpark was quarter-full when we pulled in, but once we'd paid our entry fee and made our way through the labyrynthine changing room complex to the pools proper we found them surprisingly full. Must be complete chaos during high season. We settled in to soak for a while in the second-hottest pool, then moved to the hotter one and started playing the cold pool plunge game (apart from Lovely Wife, who stayed put in the hot one).

A lot of the patrons had been speaking French, so I weed in the pool just before I got out. That'll show them.





* = Hope she gets in trouble, would serve her right for being French***.

** = We stopped. They looked like they're probably quite impressive when the stream has more water in it. As it was, not so awesome.

*** = Not sure if it's Rainbow Warrior legacy, or just the inherent sneeriness of the spoken language, but French people should all piss off to somewhere I'm not. Bunch of arseholes.