Hiking in a summer blizzard at Cirque Peak, Banff National Park.
Somehow, I forgot to blog about this hike: my last hike of the summer, with our friends Daniel & Kristina. It was the last weekend of August, and we set out to summit Cirque Peak, a 15.9km out-and-back trail in Banff National Park. The entire hike was breathtaking, taking you from the forest through to panoramic views of the mountains and the lush green valley below. The hills were still full of wildflowers, and recent rainfall turned trickles into streams, small brooks into flowing falls.
Just as we got to Helen Lake for our lunch break, the weather turned rapidly. Snow begun falling heavily around us as we hurried to put our layers back on with frozen fingers, sharp flakes hitting us in the face as the wind picked up. We were hoping it would be a classic summer snowstorm—heavy snow for 15 minutes, clear sky the next, so we chose to carry on with our initial objective, making our way to Cirque Peak. Given that we were beginning our ascent, the snow only got heavier the higher we went. Visibility became poor in these whiteout conditions, making it difficult to see or hear anything in our immediate surroundings as the blizzard whipped all around us, freezing our faces. We carried on, trying to shield our faces from the pelting snow by looking down at our feet as we trudged our way up the steep ascent. We were relatively close to the summit (maybe 500m away) when we decided to play it safe and turn around—the ascent on rocky terrain while barely being able to see more than a few metres in front of us was starting to make for dangerous conditions, not to mention we were concerned that the recent rainfall would make all the wet rocks icy during our descent.
I put my camera away as we made our way down. We tried to move swiftly and carefully as the blizzard carried on. In classic Canadian Rockies style, the snowstorm stopped and the skies cleared when we made it back to Helen Lake, 45 minutes to 1 hour later. You know what this means—we’ll simply have to try again next year.
