Our first stop yesterday was at Elk Falls, where we walked a short path to an unnervingly mobile suspension bridge next to a big waterfall that fell into a beautiful steep canyon. (Check out the person for scale in the photo below.)
We drove on into Strathcona Provincial Park, which covers a huge mountainous area that is mostly inaccessible to visitors. We walked another short but lovely trail to Lady Falls, which we decided looked a bit like a skirt. But our main destination was the Elk River trail, a fairly serious out & back that stretches 10 km along a river and eventually up into the snowy peaks and is somehow still one of the more doable hiking trails in the park. We made it 5 or 6 km in, up and down some switchbacks, past winter windfall and streams still flooded from the recent rains, not seeing anyone else for hours. We got a nice view of Elkhorn mountain before turning back.
When we headed south and further into the park, we were treated to even more outrageous views across the pebbled shores of Buttle Lake to the rocky bluffs and snowy mountains beyond. We ducked back into the woods to see Lupin Falls, which was less tall but very picturesque, tumbling in three stages past fern-covered cliffsides and ending in a charming little brook.
Back in Courtenay, we got ice cream from Blue Spruce Ice Cream (chocolate / toasted coconut for CLB and strawberry / lemon poppy seed for B, all locally sourced and hand-made and decadent) and watched the heroic Colorado Avalanche triumph against the dastardly Tampa Bay Lightning in overtime in game one of the Stanley Cup Finals.
No comments:
Post a Comment