Canada - Cathedral Lakes Lodge, Day 2

After a wonderful breakfast, we took a hike to around the Rim trail to the Giant Cleft which is a big gap in the Rim.

The hike started in a burned out area with many pretty flower gardens on our way to Glacier lake.

We reached a small plateau before Glacier Lake.  You can see the Rim ridge that we have to hike up to in the distance. The hike to the Rim was easier than yesterday's hike. At the top of the ridge, we had a nice view of Glacier Lake.  

The trail to the ridge is just to the left of the rightmost snow field in the distance

Next we hiked along the Rim to the left to get to the Giant Cleft.  It was a bit windy, but very little smoke.  We had great views beyond the Rim at other parts of the park.

We are going to that ridge in the distance

Glacier Lake with Lodge in far background

Rim trail

View of mountains on other side of ridge

Cairns showing the Rim trail

Ladyslipper Lake

We eventually got to Stone city and the Ladyslipper lake trail turn off.  We never did figure out what rock was Smokey the Bear, but we did find the Giant Cleft.

Stone City

About 0.5 mile from Stone City is the Giant Cleft.  It is really amazing deep cut in the rock which makes for some great pictures.  Even though it may look dangerous, we were always around 5 - 6 feet from the edge.

Giant Cleft

 

We had lunch at Stone City and then headed down the trail to Ladyslipper Lake.  The hardest part was coming off the ridge in the second photo as it was a steep scree slope (zoom in on the photo to see the trail)

Ladyslipper lake from the ridge

The trail down from the ridge is just to the right of the rock at the end of the ridge

Just before we got to the lake we walked through a Larch forest which must be so pretty in the fall when their needles turn yellow.  We also saw a very colorful rock face.  The colors were caused by different types of lichen. All along the trail were many wildflowers and these wonderful red cones on pine trees.

Larch forest

Shrubby cinquefoil

Male cones of Whitebark Pines

At Ladyslipper lake, Sawako cooled off her feet as we looked back up at the ridge that the Rim trail is on.  Pretty incredible that a few hours before we were up on that ridge.

We wrapped up the hike, by hiking around Pyramid Lake and another burned out area before reaching the lodge.  The fire was so intense that all the trees were killed so only fireweed and flowers are present.  BC parks estimate it will take 70 years for the area to naturally recover, but they hope to shorten that to 15 - 20 year by planting trees.

Pyramid Lake

Fireweed in burned area

Total hike was 8.6 miles and 2180' of gain.