CDT + GDT: Field / Golden to Sask Crossing: Unexpected Swimming (Nothing is easy)

Requirement 34 | Field / Gold to Sasketchawan Crossing Resort

Day 133, 15.3 miles.

I spent the morning in Golden’s at Kiorie’s Place organizing my last results of this path. Now I am really in the section of the house and I know that everything will be so beautiful that it feels like a victory return. As I did what I set out to do and now I have the space and the persistent summer season to taste it completely. Kiorie generously made my purchases, which meant that I could stay in one place and rest. We even organize my refueling together. Then, on the way back to the path, I took a tour of the Durston offices here, which was very fun to see. It was quite empty because they often run out. In fact, his last drop of tent was exhausted in 40 minutes. In the afternoon, I went out to Yoho National Park in the Kiwetinok alternative today. Custom, it was beautiful. Sometimes I would like to be able to take all people who seem to be suffering from an ego disease, of the endless grips, and take them here and say look! Look how much beauty is available for you. Look at the grace that extends to you. Let yourself be soft. Let yourself be fragile. Ábrate to your vulnerability. Accept that you are temporary, and not much more issues than this, here, now. That is liberating. This is how Earth heals us and sustains us. I remembered the Rilke line: «The impermanence that pursues our days is its fragrance.» Towards the end of the day, the alternative overlapped the popular Iceline path for which my Durston Trekking posts are named. Frite along the emerald glacier over the Yoho valley between the peaks covered with ice fields. I was surprised that I started in New Mexico’s desert and now I am walking next to the British Columbia glaciers. This is the same line on a map. That is something that I love hiking: you start as a person at one end of the path, and in the course of several months, both you and the landscape subtly change something completely different and new.

Day 134, 17.1 miles.

Today I finished the train section of the Kiwetinok alternative through the pass and a second chair with a view to the Amiskwi Valley. Fortunately, I have had an incredible climate, so despite being very steep and bushwhacky, all trips field trips are very easy whenever it is patient. When I am at an astragalus slope, I often think about how I am, but a soft body made of fragile meat and bone bone, negotiating these massive, majestic and irregular solidity icons that are impermanent, and I am deeply humiliated. Once I heard Krista Tippett interviewing scientist Xavier Le Pichon, who is one of the founders of Plate Tectonics. In his conversation, they say that «fragility is in the heart of a system that is alive.» Plate tectonics, although it causes earthquakes and tsunamis and other disasters, is also what brought us the mountains that I am walking now, when the subduction of the Pacific plaque under the American plaque raised the rock mountains. That dynamism is what life creates. The rigidity, fluidity curves is broken. Later in the day, I left Yoho National Park and started another alternative out of the way in Amiskwi Ridge overlooking the glaciers in Yoho to my southeast and north of Banff to my northwest. I have walked almost continuously through parks designated during the last ten days. Today I also met Dan Durston from Durston Gear while I was out for a couple of nights. Very appropriate to meet him along the way. Section D is your backyard. He and his wife Y-Yo’ld The Gdt in 2017, which means that they walked north to Kakwa Lakes and then turned around and walked back to the south.

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Day 135, 23.4 miles.

I started the day in a very recent burning scar since last year that descended to Collie Creek, followed by some easy but annoying bushwhacking. Honestly, I expected the day to be fast and would be on the road at the end of the day. It seemed mainly flat and was going to cross the division back to Alberta in the northern part of the Banff National Park. In general, the trails in the national parks are well maintained and are cruises. Early in the day I was thinking about how I was lucky to have the climate in the GDT. He is known for being rainy with the snowstorms of July or August. But most of my days have been sunny so far. In fact, there is a continuous heat wave, which was a problem for me today. In the afternoon I entered the Flood Plain of the Howse River at Banff Backcountry. The GDT at that time is just a game path through the forest that is known to be covered with juniper. Everyone warns you to wear pants or go to the river a couple of times and walk through the open flood plain. I am very comfortable and it seemed the best option for me. I knew it would be a strong and probably quite deep current given the heat wave, so I packed everything inside my lining of my package and took off my sun hoodie in preparation for swimming. I could not say how deep the water was due to the glacial silt, so I looked at the surface patterns in the water to try to assess the current and identify shallow waters on rocks. What I did not anticipate was that with the heat wave, the flood plain was up to its name and flooded to the edge of the forest. I had to swim three times and I coined a lot. I crossed so many braids and tributaries of the river. I tried a higher bushwhacking in the forest, but I was still in my wet shorts and cut a little death. So I returned to the flood plain, after game paths, and camped about 7 miles from the road. I have at least one more difficult Ford tomorrow, from a deep way out of the lake. Mentally, it is difficult to be so close to the road and know that it will not be easy, but some land only takes the time it takes. And it’s beautiful. I feel lucky to be hot and sleep with dry clothes. Things could be a lot of worse.

Day 136, 7.5 miles in Sasketchewan Crossing Resort. 5.2 miles outside, 12.7 miles in total.

Today I stayed in the camp waiting for the sun to appear on the mountains and bathe the valley with warmth before packing and preparing for more fords. But Wildfire Hae had put on, so he never really warmed himself. I had to wade a little until I arrived at the exit of Lake Glacier, which opens up to a wide river. I knew it would be a swimming, so I took absolutely every piece of clothes to have dry things to use later. I ended up swimming, but fortunately they didn’t take me down too far. I got on a game trace before I looked to connect to a path to Lake Glacier and then to the road to the Sasketchewan Crossing Resort. Late in the morning, the smoke of forest fires in northern Alberta had established itself. According to my light -headed pain, I suppose the AQI had about 140. In the resort, I met my friend Handyman whom I met in the hostel in East Glacier when he was moving to his friends from the PCT from Montana to Wyoming, where they had turned from Colorado. I guess he likes long trips because he drove 3.5 hours to bring my refueling and my arete, which I had lost in Boulron Creek before Mon and Zoe found him and sent him to him. Honestly, I thought about it as a sacrifice lost along the way. After I supported the miles of the road until the next beginning of the path, my very useful friend took me back to the resort, where he made eggs and toasts of avocado while packed my refueling and I did all my internet things, including the check of how bad the aqi was really: 179 today. But it seems that he will improve in the next two days as he advances in Jasper. We have a buffet in the complex and then returned to the mist. Normally I carry a N95 mask for the fire season, but this time I do not see a thinking that Canada would probably be fine. Apparently not. In the first part of section E, I saw some very great slot cannons. I have never seen a slot cannon outside the red rocks of Arizona and Utah. I hope the fog is clarified soon. I would hate losing views in Jasper.

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