I had a rest day on Sunday (day 16) and appropriately slept in to almost 9 am. I spent the day charging up my electronics, catching up on posting the blog and pics using the Wi-Fi, and eating of course. Time went by surprisingly quickly. The nobo hiker who had passed me arrived, David, and him, Luke and I were all hanging around the service centre/store to use the Wi-Fi. In the evening, we had dinner together and the people at the neighboring campsite offered us beers.

I didn’t sleep in quite as late today (day 17), I only had 19km to do and wanted to see if the store had any dental floss since I ran out last night. The store only opened at 10:30 so the three of us hung out there again until they opened. They didn’t have floss…

We set off down the road together and two cars warned us of a black bear up ahead by the roadside. We were all looking out for it and figured it had gone off but then I saw some movement in the trees and there it was. We watched it from a distance for a few minutes as it went about its business of eating berries, not seeming to mind us at all.

A few km further, we said goodbye to Luke, who is doing an alternate route.

Then it was on the road a bit further to the turn off for the trail along Upper Kananaskis Lake. However, when we got to the trailhead, it was closed due to bear activity. Probably the grizzly mum and cub that I had heard were seen nearby yesterday and who were behaving oddly (staying near the trail and people). Thankfully, we could take the road to the next trailhead.

The road had nice views of lower Kananaskis Lake and when we got to the next trailhead, it was thankfully open since there is no more road.

David and I hiked together for the first little while, but then I turned off on an alternate and he continued on the regular trail.

On my own again, I had quite the climb up to 3 Isles lake, where I’m camping tonight.

I missed getting an epic pic of the valley at the top of the climb because I would have had to have taken it before the highpoint, which was in some trees. It was a short descent to the campsite, which has about 10 tent pads. There seems to be quite a few others camped here tonight since it’s a popular destination, but I don’t think any of them are GDTers.

I did help some women out with lending them my filter since theirs wasn’t working. One of them was pumping breast milk and away from her little one. She also said, she’s already taken him hiking and camping. I also have seen all sorts of groups from families with older or younger kids, or one parent out with the kids, friends, couples, older and younger. It really is nice to see such a diversity of people getting out into nature.