Sunday, September 2, 2012

Sep 2 – Mount Robson Provincial Park


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Yesterday was just a long moving day. After Vanderhoof the next city is Prince George. On looking at the brochures there was nothing there that really interested us so we just drove on through. From there to almost the Alberta border seems to be a dead spot. None of the brochures or guide books said anything about it because there really is nothing there. Trees and farms.

We left at 8:30 am and got to Mount Robson park about 2 pm. It was a longer drive than we have done in quite a while and it was mostly in heavy rain. I really hope there was no scenery to see because all we saw were the tress beside the road and clouds.

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This provincial park is kind of expensive at $21 a night for no hookups. Usually we have paid in the $12 to $16 range. We are also in a cellular dead zone so no internet and there are tall trees so no TV. At the visitors center they said the nearest place with WIFI was about 30 km away. I don’t know how I survived the evening, forced to read a book on my iPad tucked away in my king size bed.

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The park has kind of an unusual design It is a spiral that loops into itself 4 times with a central road that bisects the spiral. It has 125 spots of which 30 are reservable. There were a lot of empty spots when we got here but when we walked the spiral in the evening there were only about 20 spots left.

Mount Robson is the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies at around 3900 meters. Yesterday when we drove in, we never even knew it was there. Today when we got up I saw that it was clear but there seemed to be some clouds moving in so we rushed over to the visitors center for a look.

I think they actually cleared this field so that you could see it from the viewing platform.

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As we watched a wispy cloud formed at the peak.

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A lot of RV’s passing thru

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From the visitor’s center we followed a 3 km loop trail.

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First stop was Overlander Falls.

It is on a early section of the soon to be mighty Fraser River which flows to the Pacific Ocean, Jennie went to investigate the layered rock pushed up at all kinds of angles.

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We stared at the boiling water for quite a while.

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The trail continues below the falls above a whitewater canyon that the river has created.

The canyon seems to be a favourite of kayakers. I would guess that about 1/4 of the people in the park have kayaks.

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On the way we passed this stump covered in mushrooms.

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Another look up the canyon.

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We had left the RV at about 10 am and didn’t bring a lunch because the description said the trail should take about 1.5 hours. Since we spent so long exploring and staring it was now about 2 pm  We should know better by now. Always take lunch!

After lunch in the RV we drove back a bit on the highway to the lookout to Mount Terry Fox. It’s kind of far back and hidden but the peak is just visible in the valley between the two closer mountains.

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What surprised me was how fast the naming happened. He died in June of 1981 and the mountain was named in September. He made quite an impact on the country.

Finally we went to Rearguard Falls. I think they are called that because they are the last place the salmon are able to reach when coming to spawn from the Pacific over 1200 km away.

It’s not much to look at from above

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But this time the viewing platform puts you practically on top of it. We are not sure why they made the bars so high, though. Jennie had to peer through them.

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We thought this rock looked like a happy hippo.

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Another hour staring at all the patterns. It was interesting how it seemed to smoothly flow over the edge for quite a while before bubbling up.

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Below here a company ran rafting trips on the rapids.

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Driving back, the clouds had moved in to cover the mountain top. It would have been an impressive view.

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Onwards to Jasper tomorrow.

1 comment:

  1. Mount Robson! Fantastic. I can't tell you how long ago we were there - camping in our little domed tent. Your conditions though are much better for viewing the mountain than we had back then. Your campsite reminds us of how private and spacious those campsites are compared to others. Awesome!!

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