Requirement 35 | Sasketowan Crossing Resort A Jasper
Day 137, 19 miles.
In the morning much of the forest fire fog had dissipated thanks to the wind overnight. I woke up with a striped throat, but quickly clarified. There was still some fog, as if someone had increased the exposure and now the white balance was off. I’m not sure how much the day I spent on a good path, but it wasn’t much. It was very washed climbing along Owens Creek and there was even a little where someone had installed a rope. But it is very fun to climb all the way along a bed of stream and see all its stages: from furious water in deep slot cannons to soft braided streams to small dripping to shallow pools in the fountain. Sometimes I could take some paths for the three passes I upload today, no longer. Sometimes it seemed that people had built unofficial molds that ended up making things more confusing because not everyone aligned. I also made some light bush around the lakes, and I was a couple of streams. I would cross and then look for the path, sometimes I saw a signage that was not where the red line was on the map, or see an obvious path that was not marked, what could be confusing: is it that a game path or is it a social path since before the brands were in its place or that the real path and perhaps the flag is off? But today’s walk was beautiful in a vast open country with no one near. Why bombard a cabin in the Caribbean when you can get a complete Alpine lake for you for the price of a little sweat? Towards the end of the day I passed some old petroglyphs made by the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of the area, which in Canada are called the first nations. It is always good to reflect on all the people who lived on this land and sat here astonished before us.
Day 138, 23.5 miles.
As I entered the last 250 miles or 400 few of my walk this year, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have a spiritual practice. I think walking a long path is a secular pilgrimage in a way. You collect everything, both physically in the belongings you carry, and mentally in the responsibilities you have. You give up the comforts of the modern world. You practice acceptance, patience, tolerance, surrender, and in particular, you practice a type of faith that if you keep moving in the right direction, you will eventually get there. This faith is especially essential when things get rough, or they simply bother, like today, when the path disappeared repeatedly or the drift covered with vegetation hit my pimples for seven miles straight or farms every fifteen feet slowed my progress. Perhaps your practice is to sit for meditation every day, even if it seems that you are not doing anything. Maybe he is kneeling to pray every night, even if you are not sure that someone is listening. As humans, we are obliged to make sense of the worldness of our existence, to have something to live for. For me at this time it is the practice of putting one foot in front of the other, despite everything. And it is something you work on every day. That is why it is called practice. I entered the Jasper National Park today and really stopped me once I arrived from the north side of Cataract Pass. I washed my face in the spring of the mountain. Science can explain it, but it is the beauty and wonder that comforts us: ask about the wealth of the world, that the water leaves the ground here for me in this sterile slope. I love being alone here, but I also hope that more and more people can come here to experience this type of wonder and then feel attracted to work more to protect our wild places that disappear. This land is our collective heritage and we have the responsibility of being its butlers and transmitting it to the next generation.
Day 139, 22.9 miles.
Today I impulsively decided to take a high route alternative after learning an hour before. I spent most of the day in forested valleys. I was spending slowly because I have a lot of time to get to Jasper. I have been sleeping and just walking 12 hours a day because now I have a pretty good idea of when I will end and what the climate will be like my remaining time on the road. Then, the time pressure of the next winter season is turned off. Near the end of the day, I was reading comments for the next waypoints when I noticed that people recommended a high route outside the path that I had not heard before: the 6 Alt passes. He was not in any of the maps he had downloaded. In addition to having a little wifi at the crossing resort, I have been totally out of line from the field, so everything I had to leave was what people had written on the Waypoint score. I triangulo his comments to discover where he started and ended the Alt. Then I looked at my mole maps to try to guess which armchairs were the 6 passes. None of them seemed so steep on my map and, for what people had said, it seemed to be within my skill level, so I will go tomorrow and see how it is going. In general, I do not recommend this approach. It is not a good idea to try a high route alternative without a route and without having conducted substantive research before. But I am curious to see how it will develop tomorrow.
Day 140, 20 miles.
Well, I exceeded my version of the 6 alternative passes to GDT to good paths in the Jasper National Park. The first four passes were easy to understand and I was having fun choosing a line and seeing how I would go. It is a totally different type of mental stimulation than to follow a path. But I think I chose the wrong mounting chair for Pass 5, because it was a young extremely dense forest that I struggled to advance. I was trying to avoid it because I thought it would be dense, but the stream that was still to move around the forest continued to descend to a deeper ravine until I gave up and went through the forest. Then I was in the wrong place for Pass 6, which I think was not a chair, but rather a rise to a peak and then a walk and a fight south where I joined the crest. So Pass 6 was also a dense forest rise to me, although I channeled my interior wire and walked through the stream and the willows everything I could before cutting the crest. Ultimately, I learned a lot and I am glad to have done it, even if a combination of forest fire fog obscured the final views of the crest. I always learn more from off off train routefinding, because you are aware of all the options that would otherwise have decided if you were simply following a path. You learn to read the land. For example, I realized that when I am walking through a swampy meadow I can use the colors of the pastures to try to find out where it will be wet. If I were on a path, someone would have already chosen the driest to walk and the colors of the herbs would only be colors for me. And today I found an uphill shelf that was the most prominent. They are so heavy, I have no idea how these animals carry two of these in the head and walk through the forest with them. I was having difficulty opening through the pine without giant things in my head. I am very happy to return to a good path. And tonight is my lawn Capboy camped this year. I cannot believe my luck with such little rain during the night on these two paths. 
Day 141, 27.8 miles in Jasper.
Today in Skyline Trail, AQI has increased to approximately 120 and visibility was not excellent. So I didn’t see too much of the famous views of this Ridgewalk walk, but I really don’t care. I feel that I have had so many incredible views for the last four months or so; It is fine if one of them was a bit dark and this one is a very accessible path and could climb this crest and return to his car on a day of 28 or 29 miles. So I could come back for that if I really want to see it on a clear day. Even with the mist, I could say that it is really beautiful. He was grateful to be on his way with Treat that he was so cross and well graduated that he could edit a lot as he walked. It was a very sudden change in the descent to Jasper in a total burns zone from devastating fires last year. It began in July 2024 and was not declared extinguished until April of this year. The fire destroyed almost 81,000 forest acres and one third of the city’s structures. But the herbs have already returned, which gives Alce and other hunting animals a lot of grazing material. And I heard currucas, hills and garbios in the burning zone. He is going back to life. Laura picked me up at the beginning of the path, who lives in the nearby Hinton and is organizing me tonight. I had more perfectly curly hair that made me a little aware of itself because when I went to take a shower and wash my clothes, I literally chosen the pine needles of my skin and clothes of the dense bushwhacking that I made yesterday. This is my last shower, my last laundry, my last stop of the city along the way. I’m glad I can share with cats. I will start the two final sections tomorrow. Others have said that this path saves the best for the end. Honestly, I can’t imagine how much better it can be. 
XX
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