Untaken Trails
  • Home
  • About
  • Multi-Day Trails
    • Bucket List
    • 2024
      • Arizona Trail
    • 2023
      • Gros Morne National Park
    • 2022
      • Pioneer Footpath
    • 2021
      • GDT Section C
      • The Boreal Trail
    • 2020
      • GDT Section B
  • Dayhikes
  • Gear
    • Gear We Use
    • Gear Reviews
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Trip Report: GDT Section C August 2021 Days 5 and 6

    Trip Report: GDT Section C August 2021 Days 5 and 6

    Section C of the Great Divide Trail according to most information is a hair over 200km of hiking trails running through mostly National Parks. I’ve been dreaming about this hike for 3 years, and I finally got to go, despite my hiking partner once again canceling on me, because my wife signed up to go with me! You can read about our first two days on trail here, and days 3 and 4 here.

    The story so far: no plan survives contact with the enemy. So far we had made changes to our itinerary almost every day. But thankfully we had only fudged one campground (and that was only because Parks Canada said the campground was fully booked when it was empty!) Today (spoiler alert!) would return us to our schedule.

    Our original plan was:

    • Day 5: Marvel Lake to Porcupine (Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park) – 26km
    • Day 6: Porcupine to Sunshine Village (Banff) – and sleep in a hotel! – 14km

    But we weren’t starting in Marvel Lake. We made it up to Magog Lake in Mount Assiniboine. So things were going to be different.

    We woke up in the Magog Lake Campground, or at least I did. I’m an early riser – once my body starts getting achy or my bladder gets full, I am getting up. Thankfully I only beat the sunrise by about a half hour so it was light enough to find my way to the outhouse over the frozen grass without my headlamp. I then proceeded over to the covered cooking area in the frosty morning air to make myself some tea, and was struck by this view:

    (more…)

    admin

    April 16, 2022
    2021, GDT Section C, Multi-Day Trails, Outdoors, Trails
    great divide trail, hiking, Howard Douglas, mount assiniboine, Porcupine
  • Trip Report: GDT Section C August 2021 Days 3 and 4

    Trip Report: GDT Section C August 2021 Days 3 and 4

    Section C of the Great Divide Trail according to most information is a hair over 200km of hiking trails running through mostly National Parks. I’ve been dreaming about this hike for 3 years, and I finally got to go, despite my hiking partner once again canceling on me, because my wife signed up to go with me! You can read about our first two days on trail here.

    The original plan was to take days 3 and 4 very easy, so that if my wife, who is new to long-distance hiking, needed time to recover from her first two passes she would have it. However, I had the feeling that because day 3 would have been flat valley-bottom walking, we may have a shot at combining days 2 and 3. The original plan for days 3 and 4 were:

    • Day 3: Palliser Pass (HOTR) over Palliser Pass to Birdwood Camp (Banff National Park, AB) – 11km, 100m ascent, 150m descent
    • Day 4: Birdwood to Marvel Lake Camp (Banff) – 14km, 50m descent, 50m ascent

    But since we finished Day 2 at Burstall Camp (3km south of Birdwood), we had almost accomplished the combining of the two days and were ahead of schedule!

    This opened up a few options.

    • Option 1: extend our time in Banff (night 6) between legs and give ourselves a true zero day instead of a nearo (and pulling 20km to get to Banff isn’t exactly restful), or
    • Option 2: take an extra day in Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park. I had planned ahead and booked a spot at Magog Lake (I had been efforting Og Lake to skip Porcupine, but no sites at Og ever came open) just in case we did combine the two days.

    In order to extend the Banff stay to a true zero, we would have had to camp at all subsequent campsites a day early, and risk the wrath of angry rangers, and fines for not having campsites booked. Granted, we had already done that once with Burstall, but the empty campground meant we didn’t feel guilty in the least. I had tried to book, they told us there was none, and that was a lie so…

    (more…)

    admin

    October 2, 2021
    GDT Section C, Multi-Day Trails, Outdoors, Trails
    great divide trail, hiking, mount assiniboine, wonder pass
  • The Big One 2019: Mount Assiniboine and Section C of the Great Divide Trail

    The Big Hike 2019: Mount Assiniboine

    I would love to hike more but taking care of family still holds me back. Last summer I planned to hike Section A of the Great Divide Trail (Waterton Lakes National Park to the Crowsnest Pass), but my hiking partner had to back out last minute… so I visited Haida Gwaii instead. A decent tradeoff, but not a hike.

    This year I am working on a plan that involves many other hikers, so hopefully even if a few back out I’ll have some people to go with. And the destination: Mount Assiniboine!

    (more…)

    admin

    February 2, 2019
    GDT Section C, Multi-Day Trails, Outdoors, Trails
    banff, great divide trail, hike, mount assiniboine, rockies

©2023 All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • YouTube