Larger Than Large

Watch what you ask for, it might come true!  I wished for "large" today but as it turned out, I got more then I wished for.  I got "larger than large"  and that is worthy of being framed!  Beginning under bright sunshine and ending in the dark of the night ,  it was eight hours and forty-one minutes of being high on life.

We had a long list to accomplish that would take us, what seemed like, all over creation.  The obvious ask for the day was to be adventurous and hard core and flexible (more physically then mentally).  Me and my friends answered that ask 100%!

When you are exploring all over creation, you are presented with many signs leading you here, there and everywhere.  We started in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park in Alberta and ended up in Elk Lakes Provincial Park in British Columbia.  Our first and most important destination was Fox Lake.

Once we figured out the direction we needed to go, we blazed a trail through the deep snow.

Fox Lake was the lunch venue.  We had sunshine, no wind and warm temperatures for our pot-luck cook-out.  I used my Trangia 27-5UL for the first time and it is a keeper.  My contribution was chili which was heated thoroughly in about 10 minutes.  I sampled a little bit of what my friends prepared including cheese fondue, shrimp, yam/potato bake, baklava, and a couple of other dishes.  

Forty-five minutes later, we packed up and hit the trail again as we had lots more ground to snowshoe, but not before taking a few photos of the beautiful area.  I'm on the middle of Fox Lake with Mount Fox behind me.  The far side of the Lake is considered avalanche terrain so we remained well away from there.

Back at the junction, we took a different route for our return and veered up the long and winding Blueberry Hill.  It is a x-ski trail which is packed solid so we hiked instead of snowshoeing along side the tracks until we reached the top.  From the top, the view through the trees was the Upper Kananaskis Lake which was our last destination via bushwhacking down the backside of Blueberry Hill.  It was already 4:30 and we had to be hasty to make sure we reached bottom before dark.  We accomplished the majority in light and the last portion was in darkness.   Two of us went ahead quickly to make a trail to the opening for the others to follow under the light of headlamps.  

We had one kilometer of road to hike back to the trail head and it was the coolest sight seeing mountain silhouettes, the stars coming out and headlamps bobbing along.  I secretly wished for the day to end this way!  When all was said and done, I was pleasantly depleted, yet I still felt like I was "on top of the world!"