I had flown into Calgary the previous night and shuttled to a hotel near the airport. I hadn’t realized the flight was 4.5 hours, but it gave me a chance to finish the book I was reading and I had just about the only empty seat next to me in the flight.  The trip out to the airport was fine in the end, but felt unlucky. My bus ticket didn’t work and no one was around to help me, the bus was late and then 3 of them showed up together and the queue to access the airport is really slow and very anxiety provoking because you feel like you could be stuck there for hours. I had plenty of time in the end and everything went smoothly once at the airport.

I was quite tired by the time I arrived at the hotel, but it didn’t translate to a great sleep. I also woke up around 5 am and couldn’t sleep again, probably because of the time change. Lying awake at 5 am, I suddenly realized that I had not packed my mug and spoon, so at least I realized this before heading into the backcountry. After breakfast at the hotel and shuttling back to the airport, I met up with Roger, another hiker, and we met our ride, Chantel, a few minutes later. The journey to Waterton was uneventful, but towards the end, the foothill turned into real mountains and it was hard not to feel intimidated.

Waterton is a national park and has a ‘townsite’ with a massive campground, shops, restaurants and stores. I picked up a new spoon and mug at the gear shop, as well as bear spray and gas then headed over to the campground. I set up my tent and then met up again with Roger, after some difficulties communicating with patchy data, to do the first part of the trail. It actually starts at the border, 6.5 km away so we walked there and back along the shore of Upper Waterton Lake.

There was a fire here in 2018 and the burned trunks were all around although the undergrowth around them is very lush. We passed a lot of day hikers and my fear of meeting a grizzly evaporated given the busyness of the trail. After a fork, it did quieten up a bit and there were some places that I would have probably called out ‘hey bear’ at given the trail turned and was overgrown if I hadn’t been alone and making a lot of noise chatting. We made it to the start of the trail in about 1.75 hours and took some pics before heading back.

We got back to Waterton around 7pm and split up. I showered and then went into town to have some dinner. Walking back to the campsite was a lovely sunset over the end of the lake. Back at my campsite, I stretched and then called it a day.