31 August 2016, Wednesday

By 6:45 the shelter at Whitehorn Campground is a flurry of activity as hikers cook breakfast on every kind of camp stove imaginable and people stuff gear into packs for the day’s hike. O and I cook up our grits souffle, dry the tent fly as best we can (it rained during the night) and pack up.

We depart around 8:45. Today we gain almost 500 meters within a four km stretch. We are distracted from the hard work of climbing by the beautiful scenery as waterfalls course over canyon walls. Hikers who have been here before comment that the falls are more vigorous now than in the spring, I suppose as a result of glacial melting in the August sun. There are three major falls as we hike upward. The last and biggest is Emperor Falls. I film the falls briefly. Another hiker offers to take our photo by the cascade, but we fail to get a good photo as the camera lens is quickly covered in mist.

We arrive at Berg Lake (Berg is short for iceberg) Campground and choose a site on a hillside away from the crowd at the cooking shelter. For today this is very pleasant, but we may be spending more time at the shelter if the weather is as bad as is forecast. The tarp is hung and we cook here this evening. We have one of our favorite camp meals, bechamel mac and cheese, with chocolate mousse for dessert. By 6:30 everything is cleaned up and the food is stowed (far) away in the metal bear locker.

Now we have time to sit and watch the everchanging lake and the play of light on the glaciers. The peak of Mt. Robson appears and disappears as clouds form around its crown. At intervals we hear distant rumbling. Some of this is thunder and some is snowfall on the glacier. The sky overhead is still blue. We await tomorrow’s weather to make a decision about hiking.