In June 2024, I spent a week in the Canadian Rockies with ten high school friends. I suppose this could be considered some sort of mini five-year reunion, seeing that we all graduated high school in 2019. It was a lot of fun catching up with everyone—the group ranged from people I see almost every day (like Nelson) to people I hadn’t seen since graduating high school.
The rough way the week went was: we first flew into Calgary, spent a couple of days there just hanging out, gathering supplies (including, most importantly, lots and lots of Sour Patch!), and exploring the city. Then, we drove over to Banff and spent the remainder of our time going on various adventures and misadventures around the town and in the park.
We spent Saturday and Sunday in Calgary, which was actually not a bad city. It’s a small-ish but clean and open city; the downtown area seemed to be quite empty when we visited, almost reminding me of Chicago.1 Perhaps the highlight of our (admittedly limited) Calgary experience was touring the rather small Chinatown. There was a cultural center with a museum and a spouting bowl, which one could make “sing” (i.e. vibrate at some resonant frequency) by rubbing in exactly the right way. It took me an embarrassing number of tries to get it working.
We continued to walk around the city some more; Prince’s Island—a pleasant park situated on an island in the middle of the city—was another highlight. Led by our glorious leader Yogi (or Lisan al Gaib, as Daniel would say), we spent some time admiring the local real estate, which was surprisingly nice. In particular, there was a rather attractive neighborhood on top of a hill overlooking the city; the picture above reproduces the view.
On Sunday, I attended service at All Saints Anglican Church, an Anglo-Catholic church just a few minutes’ walk from our accommodations. I’m not Anglican (and certainly not Catholic), but I do enjoy spending vacation time worshipping at various churches that I wouldn’t normally go to at home. (Although I do draw the line somewhere, of course.) At any rate, the service was heavily liturgical, as one might expect, and the people there were were quite lovely. I partook in the Sacrament, despite having some small reservations about whether it was right for me to do so. Sadly, I couldn’t join them for lunch afterward, as I had to meet up with my friends for lunch.
On Monday, we packed up and drove off to Banff. The drive was uneventful but incredibly scenic—as the driver I wasn’t able to take any pictures for the blog, but just imagine long stretches of open highway through the foothills of a massive mountain range. We settled into our rental cabin without much incident and had quite the time preparing sandwiches for the next day’s hike. A video of this incident was taken and may even surface one day, if Emily ever gets around to actually making the promised vlog of the trip.
The Banff leg of our trip started out strong with a visit to Lake Louise on Tuesday. Lake Louise is justifiably one of the most famous lakes in the area, notable for the brilliant blue shade of its waters. I mean, just look at it:
After taking the various obligatory photos, we went canoeing on the lake. I was a bit skeptical at first, thinking that I’d enjoy hiking over canoeing, but it ended up being an enjoyable experience. We then hiked up to Lake Agnes, a relatively simple hike with a rather rewarding alpine lake at the end. As a bonus, there’s even a nice alpine lake in the middle: Mirror Lake, with its deep emerald waters! (Okay, maybe I’m just way too into alpine lakes. See my gushing over Cathedral Lakes during my most recent Yosemite trip, for instance…)
Unfortunately, this is where the good fortune ended. Feeling a bit unsatisfied with the hike, I proposed hiking up to one of the Big or Little Beehives, which are supposed to give spectacular views of Lake Louise below. After a bit of deliberation, we decided upon the Big Beehive trail. You see, we’d forgotten the following sign at the very bottom of the trail, back at Lake Louise: “Lake Agnes to Big Beehive trail not recommended due to avalanche risk & deep snow. Upper elevation trails remain snow covered and icy. Ice cleets [sic] are required.” The funny thing is that I’d even taken a picture of the sign when I first saw it.
Anyway, we did not make it. The group stopped at the opposite end of Lake Agnes, once it became clear that the rest of the trail (which would be quite steep) was completely snow-covered. Several people started climbing around some nearby boulders for fun; Justin went particularly far. Seeing that he wouldn’t be back for a while, I decided to make an attempt up the snowy slopes to reach the view at the top of the Big Beehive.
This didn’t seem totally crazy, as there were clear tracks in the snow indicating that others had successfully made the trip recently. But I did severely underestimate how difficult it would be to climb up the slope; crawling up on all fours was probably one of the scarier things I’ve done while hiking (though I think some of the shenanigans we got up to during our senior trip were worse), and progress was incredibly slow. If I slipped (or, in the worst case, an avalanche occurred), I’d be swept down the slope right into the frozen lake at the bottom. Uh, not exactly fun, and if I’m honest, a bit foolhardy.
Eventually, everything kind of fell apart. It took so long that Daniel ended up coming after me to tell me to come down, and then as luck would have it, a thunderstorm started, necessitating turning around. If there’s anything worse than going up a steep slope, it’s going down; progress downward was even slower than the way up, at least until I figured out that a controlled amount of sledding on my, er, rear end was possible. Eventually, I made it down safely, just as the rain was getting worse.
When I got back to the others, I found out the situation was, in fact, even worse: apparently Justin had explored too far into the rocks and gone missing! A few of us went back to the tea house on the other side of the lake to wait out the rain, while the rest stayed behind to continue the search effort. Finally, after an indeterminate amount of time, they found him.
Of course, our woes were not yet over, because we had to hike down the mountain to get back to Lake Louise in the pouring rain. At this point, morale in the group was fairly low. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed the hike down a lot; I feel like there comes a point where you get wet enough and just embrace the rain—it’s quite a freeing feeling, really. Evidently, the others did not agree; when we got to the bottom, everyone starting lambasting Justin for his misadventure. I got away relatively unscathed, as I have much better PR than he (according to Daniel). Anyway, lesson learned: the hiking season in Banff actually starts at the end of June…bring ice cleats if coming earlier than that!
There was a fun mini-adventure when we got back to the cabin: as I was strolling around the parking lot, I encountered a guy walking a dog. He greeted me, pointed to a nearby clearing, and told me that there was a moose there! I went over, took a peek, and confirmed that there was indeed a large mammal there. Excitedly, I ran back to the cabin and told everyone there that there was a moose outside!
We were all quite excited about seeing this Canadian wonder and spent some time marveling at it. But then, a dispute then arose among us aspiring naturalists as to whether this was truly a moose, or whether it was properly classified as a different sort of ungulate. Alas, the naysayers prevailed: it was discovered that it was but an elk…
If there’s any lake in Banff more well-known than Lake Louise, it has to be Moraine Lake, famously featured on the back of the (Canadian) twenty-dollar bill.2 Having gotten a warm shower and (hopefully) a good night’s sleep to recover from our dramatic Lake Louise visit, we set out on Wednesday for Moraine Lake.
Anyway, Moraine Lake is also very attractive, boasting its own turquoise waters, although again I think we went a little too early in the season. I believe that later in the year, as the snow caps melt, the lake becomes fuller; when we went, the water level was somewhat low, exposing a decent amount of the lake bed. A few of us climbed up to the top of a nearby rock pile to appreciate the view.
We had chosen an extremely windy day to visit the lake; our walk along the Moraine Lake shore had to be terminated early for the shelter of the trees. We then hiked up to the lower of the two Consolation Lakes nearby, where there was a fun boulder field that we spent some time scrambling around. And right on cue, Justin fell into the lake as he was attempting a jump onto a boulder too far into the water. Some things never change…
The main attraction on Thursday was Sulphur Mountain, quite close to the town of Banff and in fact accessible by public transit. Most people took the gondola up, but a few enterprising individuals (Justin, Jerry, Karena, and me) elected to hike up the mountain. It’s not that big of a mountain, and the hike up was fairly pleasant, although for the most part the trees block the view.
The top of the mountain was quite heavily developed, with a lot of tourist infrastructure to let people appreciate the view. We saw some bighorn sheep, which was quite nice, although apparently there’s a rather severe fine for feeding them. We had lunch at a buffet at the top; while the food was decidedly middling in quality, I suppose they’re really selling the view. Though honestly, I don’t want to sound too snobby, but I kind of feel like both the food and view from the summit of Pilatus in Switzerland is better.
Friday was our last day in Banff, and we spent it at Johnston Canyon, one of the most heavily trafficked hiking areas in the park. As a big group, we hiked up to the lower and upper falls, which are decently impressive, particularly if waterfalls are your thing. The trail passed through some pretty narrows via a walkway built into the side of the rock, which sort of made up for the Narrows being closed when I visited Zion.
From the upper falls, Justin and I continued on to the Ink Pots, a collection of small, colorful pools fed by underground cold springs. Here, water bubbles up from underground, creating interesting crater-like structures on the floors of the pools. Honestly, the Ink Pots were okay; I mostly wanted to get more hiking mileage in. I figured it would be a shame to fly thousands of miles to one of the most gorgeous national parks in the world, only to not hike that much. Justin was the only one who could be convinced to come.
On the way back, we decided to switch things up and take the Moose Meadows trail, which was a bit disappointing, as there were neither moose nor meadows. But, we did see a bear track on the trail, which was kind of exciting. We had to round out the hike along a highway to get back to our car, but I didn’t mind it because of how beautiful the highway was. I was jealous of the cyclists riding on the highway; it seemed like an incredible place to go for a bike ride.
Of course, this is my rather biased summary of what happened on this trip. As one might be able to tell, I was most enthusiastic about the hiking portions of the trip. For others, I’m sure exploring the towns or spending nights together in the cabin were the highlights; in fact, not everyone went on every hike with us. Perhaps it’s not surprising that I was unanimously voted the most “granola” (i.e. outdoorsy) person on the trip, though apparently Karena (currently at #2) is vying for my spot.
A few more miscellaneous bullet points from the trip:
Overall, Banff was a great time getting to see a bunch of old high school friends again, in one of the most beautiful settings on the planet. Thanks to everyone who organized the trip!
I don’t have that much experience with Chicago, but I visited in high school for a quizbowl tournament. It struck me as oddly empty, particularly compared to New York.↩︎
So like 14.62 real dollars, at the time of writing…↩︎
As a Tolkien fan, my mind naturally went to Gondolin, the hidden city of Turgon nestled in a secret valley among the mountains of Beleriand.↩︎
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