Hiking

When I arrived at the much heralded Lake Louise at Banff National Park on my sojourn through the Canadian Rockies, I was expecting a lot due to the hype and it definitely met up to my expectations.

After spending some time by the lakeside soaking in the majestic views of the blue azure waters that were surrounded by glacier capped mountains, we decided to hike up the Lake Agnes trail.

This is one of my favorite hikes in the extended Bay area. Just south of Carmel, this is a nice outing for the intermediate hiker. There are signs marking Garrapata State Park before the trailhead but there is no formal entrance or anything like that. Incidentally, Garrapata means something like wood tick in Spanish. The trailhead is at a turnout on a curving part of Highway 1 about 10 miles south of Carmel. Look for a gate on the left side. We had decided to take the Soberanes creek- Rocky Ridge loop trail.

The Alpine Circuit hike around Lake O’Hara has got to be one of the most spectacular hikes around. For terrific mountain scenery, there are very few day hikes (or even multi-day hikes) that can top this. We hiked the Wiwaxy gap/Huber ledges/Lake Oesa part of the Alpine circuit during our 2004 Canada trip.

It was the last day of our Labor Day weekend trip to Olympic National Park and on a whim, we decided to go to the Paradise area of Rainier National Park on our way back to Seattle. We reached there just after lunch time. We had grabbed something to eat along and were ready to do a quick hike. The ranger in the visitor center suggested doing either the Nisqually Vista trail or the Myrtle Falls trail. We went with the latter one.

Day 2 of the trip dawned bright and sunny. Our plan was to hike to Piegan Pass. You can do a longer hike from Going-to-the-Sun road to Many Glacier, but we were only going till the pass.

The hike to Larch valley and Sentinel Pass is one of my favorite hikes. A moderately strenuous hike, with great views along the way, and ending in a superb spot high in the mountains - that’s what I like in a hike. This is a 7.2 mile roundtrip hike with about 2400 feet of elevation gain. It took us about 5-6 hours to complete the hike.