Hello all,
After my last post about a mountain holiday I had enough good comments to suggest I could do it again. This past long weekend my wife - Angela - and I did a mountain holiday. We flew in a helicopter from Golden into the back-country where we started a three night hut to hut hike. We were doing this with a company called Golden Alpine Holidays. It was a great trip and that is part of the reason to share the story. Don’t worry, most of the story is in pictures!
We had to leave Golden, and drive on the TransCanada highway for bit to find the helicopter departure point. Here is a picture of our helicopter coming in for a load of food and gear to take out to the three huts.
After all of the time in helicopters when I was in the Army I would either love them or hate them. I love them!
You can see the people in the chopper who are leaving the hut to hut traverse we are heading out for.
It is a little dance, in that we are crouched and waiting, and they get out and go to a certain point and crouch and wait, and we get in. Once we are off, and maybe 14 minutes flight, we can see the first glimpse of our first lodge - Vista. For the first time in a long time we are riding in a Mountain Rescue Service of Canada. Means a better pilot (usually) and he may be late to pick us up if there is a rescue!
The first building is our sauna and is that ever nice. These mountain huts are really lodges I guess, and pretty nice. The cooking is very important out in the back-country and we will see how that goes!
Here is a shot of Angela in our first day of hiking when we need to cross a little snow field. In the background is Suzanne, who is the other Canadian. Which was a big surprise as normally there is Angela and I as the token North Americans or maybe Canadians, and the rest is US or Europeans. This trip we had Canadians, US, and Japanese - the guide told us they never had so many North Americans.
Here is an interesting picture of Angela distracted by a major flower area. Quite a collection of wildflowers, which we saw a lot of when we were just below treeline.
We had several guides on this trip that hiked with us, and helped keep us on course and safe. Hero was the name of one who hiked with us a lot and was pretty darn good. He was a Yamnuska guide and certified with ACMG too. He was multi - talented and it showed in this picture. He was pretty good actually - as a musician that is.
Between Lodge 2 and Lodge 3 we walked along a very long ridge - called Panorama, and then went up to the summit of a very nice mountain - Cupola Peak. Here is a picture of us - with our fellow Canada Suzanne on the summit.
That odd looking stuff to our right - your left is the repeater that the Golden Alpine need to allow their people to talk to each out when out on the traverse.
Here is a picture of the lodge we just came from. Will need to look close as it is far down!
One of the very important staff positions in the lodge is the chef. And we had a great one named Charlotte. Here is her starting a pork loin dinner that was amazing.
And she had to hike between the lodges with us - and still do amazing food! And wow was it!!
Here we are doing a short hike around the last lodge before we head out and back to civilization. We had no electricity, internet, or cell service for four days and was it ever nice!
A few were really involved in the flowers, and the rest of us were not so much!
I do strongly recommend Golden Alpine if you want to hike lodge to lodge (or serious back-country skiing in winter), and if you want to mountaineer / ice climb / rock climb, or need a really good certified guide I strongly recommend Yamnuska.
We had a wonderful time due to the great staff of Terry, Hero, and Charlotte, but we also had some great guests that were fun to talk and hike with - so thanks everyone!
Michael
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