Water & Ice

Spring and winter in one day! That's what it felt like when we hiked into the Ink Pots where it was sunny and bright and took a detour to see the Upper Falls where it was icy and chilly.

We started from the Moose Meadows parking lot and followed a hard packed trail with gradual elevation up through the trees. It was -5 Celsius but felt cooler in the trees and it wasn't until we reached the fork in the trail to veer off to the Ink Pots that we shed a layer. I have been to this area before and I was excited for what we would see as the sky was blue and bright and I knew the views would be gorgeous. As we got closer, I quickened my pace, I could hardly wait to get there!

It felt like a spring day feeling the sun beat down and seeing the pots not frozen over. The benches were even vacant of snow which made for a great dining spot and this was our lunch time view.

As you can see above, I wore my icers to this point along the hard packed trail but now it was time to strap on my snowshoes and explore the area. A few others came along. We had to cross a bridge to get to the other side of the partially frozen creek to where we had a wide open playground.

We explored, played, admired the views, took photos and took turns breaking trail! It was untouched snow that was above my knees when I did sink through. For us few, this added on about another kilometer to our day.

Spring turns into winter! On the return trip, we carried on past the fork to see what has happening at the Upper Falls. Near the ice, in the shade, it felt like winter. We watched the ice climbers for a short while as did the raven. See the raven in the upper right photo!

The scenery was amazing today! What a difference a large blue sky can make. I couldn't stop smiling the whole time and these seemed pretty happy too!

With the added exploratory trip in the valley, and myself and a buddy taking two trips to see the ice climbers, the total distance tallied up to 15.2 km, which was more then I was expecting but when it came down to getting near the end, I wanted more! I wasn't ready for the day to be over. Yet, for now, today has me feeling "on top of the world"!