Some people have mentioned that I haven’t posted a trip report for the Kootenay trip that Tim and I did in October over the long weekend, this is mainly because I somehow forgot to bring a camera! It’s really disappointing too since the cool air was super crisp and clear and the scenery was amazing.

As for the water purification tablets, we never ended up using them. The water in the steams was so cold that any time the water ran over a rock or a piece of wood it would freeze into a big icicle. So we figured it was probably pretty clean if it was that cold and took our chances.

I really enjoyed this hike in the shoulder season since the bugs are non-existant and hiking in cooler temperatures is much easier, especially on the uphill. The daytime high was somewhere around +10 to 15C and on the second night it went down to at least -10C. It was pretty frosty in the morning, and there was lots of condensation frozen inside the tent but my new MEC Hybrid -20C bag worked well. It was so toasty you could probably bake cookies in it.

The Rockwall trail itself was spectacular, and now I can definitely see why it’s one of the most popular trails in Canada. The huge limestone cliffs were impressive and made all that much better by the thin layer of fresh snow up high. The longest day was 21km and although it was supposed to be quite difficult it didn’t seem bad at all since there was only two of us we could keep a steady pace and the air was nice and cool. The sudden temperature changes between the sunny and shaded areas was pretty remarkable. In the sun the ground was soft and muddy but in the shade it was frozen solid and the air was easily 15 degrees cooler.

Since I forgot to bring a camera here are a couple shots from other people of the Rockwall from flickr.com: One,Two, Three

The first shot is actually of the Floe Lake part of the trail that we weren’t on, but it’s very similar to what you see later in the trail. The second shot is again nearer to Floe Lake than we were but still very similar. The last shot is exactly what we hiked, you can see Rockwall pass off in the distance and the alpine meadows that we hiked after the pass. There is also a very impressive lake hidden just below the shot.