Waterton Lakes

Waterton Lakes

After leaving Kananaskis and resting for a few days in Coleman, I made the short drive south to Waterton Lakes National Park. If you’re as unfamiliar with Waterton Lakes as I was, if you look on the map it’s basically a continuation of Glacier National Park in Montana (and vice versa). It’s the same mountain range, only an international border separates the two parks. In fact, in a heartwarming show of solidarity, I’ve since seen them referred to as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. Love that. 

Unsurprisingly, most of my time in Waterton Lakes was spent hiking the various trails and photographing the local landscape. And there were plenty of both to keep me busy. 

The most notable hike I did was the Crypt Lake Trail, which is one of the more unique hikes I’ve ever done. It required a ferry ride across Waterton Lake to the trailhead, passed multiple large waterfalls and a couple lakes, one section required a ladder climb which led to a long, tight tunnel that was blasted through the rock that I had to remove my pack and sideways shuffle through, which then led to a narrow cliff ledge walk and eventually back to the hiking trail. Then you get to do it all in reverse after enjoying Crypt Lake. All of these factors, in addition to the gorgeous landscape throughout the hike, helped the Crypt Lake Trail make National Geographic's “World’s 20 Most Thrilling Trails” list in 2014, and claim the “Canada’s Best Hike” award in 1981. Was it my favorite hike I’ve ever done? No. But it was still pretty dang awesome and I’m so glad I went.

This time of year, the ferry has one drop-off time in the morning and one pick-up time in the evening—and, unless you’re prepared for a freezing night in grizzly country, you’d better not miss that pickup time! Because there’s only one drop-off and pickup time, it’s known that everyone on that morning ferry will not only be on the hiking trail and at the lake with you, but will also be on the return ferry, which made it really easy to make friends somewhere along the way. In my case, the friendship I made with a really nice couple at Crypt Lake turned into an impromptu engagement photoshoot, as the guy slyly notified me that he was about to propose to his girlfriend, at which point I made some last-minute camera setting adjustments and, as he dropped to one knee, I began snapping photos feverishly. Thankfully she said yes and, also thankfully, I think the photos turned out pretty darn good. Oddly enough, that wasn’t the last engagement I photographed on this trip.

Even though there were plenty of memorable things about my time in Waterton Lakes, what will forever stand out in my memory were the bears. Up until this point in the trip I had seen zero bears, and a surprisingly small amount of wildlife in general. But after six days in Waterton Lakes I had probably seen twenty bears. Most of the bears I saw were black bears, some of which were actually black in color, while others were cinnamon bears, which is simply a color morph sub-species of the black bear. 

I loved every single bear encounter I had in Waterton Lakes… except for one. But, in my defense, I had never seen two full-grown grizzlies running towards me in the backcountry before. And, at the time, I didn’t enjoy it one bit.

But that’s a story for next week.

“The deepest lake in the Canadian Rockies (444 feet, 135 meters) and the first oil well in western Canada (1902) are both found in Waterton, a small park named in honor of English naturalist Charles Waterton. Waterton sits in the extreme southwestern corner of Alberta, sharing boundaries with British Columbia and Montana in the United States. It’s “where the mountains meet the prairies,” as locals like to say. Indeed, lush native grassland rolls right up to the colorful peaks, which have been carved from sedimentary rock well over a billion years old.” www.nationalgeographic.com