Day 7
Day 7, the final day, and the day I finally kept my word about waking up at 5:30am to see the sunrise. Awake at 5:30am, I debated weather I should actually get up for 10 minutes, then finally pushed myself outside, shook the other tent to wake up the other 2 and then ran out to the lake.
At 5:42am the sky was a beautiful <a href="/outdoors/2006/08_moose/7/IMG_5073.jpg.html">red</a>.
At 5:45am the sky was white, gray and dull, and the others were finally up (they missed it!).
At 6:00am the clouds were <a href="/outdoors/2006/08_moose/7/IMG_5074.jpg.html">shining bright yellow/gold</a> while we were still in the shadow of the mountains.
Being the last morning, and we were back on schedule with 1 full day to do the last 22km to the van, we decided to eat, a lot, and for a long time. We had almost 2x the oatmeal as usual (we ate the 1 spare breakfast), along with 2 other "meals". Throughout the morning of sitting around eating we also had some interesting discussions with a recently retired Vancouver man and a ranger. The ranger showed us all the points on the topo map which the Moose River trail was wrong and the actual locations of the campsites.
The hike down was fairly quick, spending almost as much time eating lunch and swimming (ok, running in and out very quickly for me) in Kinney Lake as hiking.
We arrived at the van shortly before 8pm. We were supposed to pay for our campsite at the park building on our way out but it was closed. Since the ranger up there was such an interesting/nice/informative guy we slipped $20 and a note through the door. We then drove to Jasper for food/beer and then to a campsite a couple km away for the night.
The next morning was our real were-back-in-society-with-running-water-and-flushing-toilets meal. We started off with a few breakfasts (french toast and waffles) for appetizers before moving on to pancakes, bacon, sausages, eggs, tea, and a coffee refill about every 5 minutes for myself (I also borrowed some pancakes from others).
In the end the GPS odometer rea
At 5:42am the sky was a beautiful <a href="/outdoors/2006/08_moose/7/IMG_5073.jpg.html">red</a>.
At 5:45am the sky was white, gray and dull, and the others were finally up (they missed it!).
At 6:00am the clouds were <a href="/outdoors/2006/08_moose/7/IMG_5074.jpg.html">shining bright yellow/gold</a> while we were still in the shadow of the mountains.
Being the last morning, and we were back on schedule with 1 full day to do the last 22km to the van, we decided to eat, a lot, and for a long time. We had almost 2x the oatmeal as usual (we ate the 1 spare breakfast), along with 2 other "meals". Throughout the morning of sitting around eating we also had some interesting discussions with a recently retired Vancouver man and a ranger. The ranger showed us all the points on the topo map which the Moose River trail was wrong and the actual locations of the campsites.
The hike down was fairly quick, spending almost as much time eating lunch and swimming (ok, running in and out very quickly for me) in Kinney Lake as hiking.
We arrived at the van shortly before 8pm. We were supposed to pay for our campsite at the park building on our way out but it was closed. Since the ranger up there was such an interesting/nice/informative guy we slipped $20 and a note through the door. We then drove to Jasper for food/beer and then to a campsite a couple km away for the night.
The next morning was our real were-back-in-society-with-running-water-and-flushing-toilets meal. We started off with a few breakfasts (french toast and waffles) for appetizers before moving on to pancakes, bacon, sausages, eggs, tea, and a coffee refill about every 5 minutes for myself (I also borrowed some pancakes from others).
In the end the GPS odometer rea
