Monday 9th

Woke up to rain - the first of the holiday. Got ready and went down to breakfast. A fairly small room considering the size of the motel. We had our standard breakfast including th fresh fruit. Got talking to two Canadian ladies on the next table and two Asian ladies on another. One of the Asian ladies was from Yorkshire and was over visiting the other who was her cousin.

Came back up to the room. The rain had stopped but it looked very black and the forecast was for a showery morning, so we didn’t rush. Caught up on the diary and the photos.

Finally set out just before 10.30am. Drove back to Hwy 1 and then went a short way north to come off onto the 1A Bow Valley Parkway to do the southern half that we missed yesterday. We pottered up as far as Johnston Canyon where we parked. Went into the café to get a quick coffee before the walk to the falls. Chatted to an English couple from Derby. They, like everyone else we’ve spoken to, had seen loads of bears on the road.

Set off to do the walk along the river to the falls. Very pleasant - not too hard going although obviously uphill all the way. A few interesting catwalks that are cantilevered out from the valley wall. Finally made it to the lower falls which were spectacular. Went through the small tunnel to get the close up view and got slightly damp from the spray.

By the time we’d walked back again it was lunchtime so we shared a tuna sandwich and apple juice in the café before setting off again.

Next stop was Rock Lake. We’d read that there was a 45min round walk to Silverton Falls which were alleged to be 0.7km away. It was just starting to drizzle so we put on our waterproofs and set off. The path was fine for the first couple of hundred metres, then it split. The nice wide path with gravel surfacing carried on to the lake (a 7 hour round walk). Our path became a simple track through the woods. We followed this gently uphill for what seemed a long time, then came to a point by some low rapids where lots of trees had fallen across the river. We then noticed that the path zigzagged up the valley side to our left. We carried on struggling quite steeply uphill. We were quite worried at one point where the path had obviously been carried away by a mini landslide and a new track had been established across the debris. Rather worrying as it was very narrow and it was a long drop down the side. We made it past this and were starting to despair of ever reaching the alleged falls when we finally got there. A spectacular sight. The end of the path is a viewpoint about half way up the cascade which falls 50m in three stages. Not only was the view of the water good but looking back there was a spectacular view back down the valley to Highway 1 in the distance.

The walk had been really quite strenuous for us (we must’ve taken over an hour to do the round trip) but we’d hardly seen anybody. One young couple had been setting off as we arrived. They were just leaving the viewpoint as we reached there. There was another group just setting off as we got back to the car park so in effect we had the whole place to ourselves. This was nice but we were slightly alarmed at the thought of possibly meeting a bear in the woods.

By now it was about 2.45pm. We drove a short way north to reach the point where we left the 1A yesterday so we turned back on the 1 and returned to Banff. We were heading for the gondola but we missed the turn. Fortunately this took us directly to Bow Falls viewpoint so we parked up and spent some time taking photographs. A local Canadian couple started talking to us and they confirmed what we’d suspected from the photographs on the site, namely that the river is much higher than it normally is. They said that they’d never seen it so high.

We carried onto the gondola. There were no queues so we bought our tickets and went straight up. An impressive ride taking 8 minutes. It’s parallel to the ground so there are no enormous distances below you but the view looking out across Banff and along the valleys is very impressive. As we reached the top it started to snow. We took a quick couple of photos and then went inside for a cup of tea. It’s very cold and windy at the top and we were glad we’d taken coats.

As we had our drinks the weather cleared again and we went up three floors to the Observation Deck. Strangely not many people seemed to bother to do this. A shame because there are great views. By the time we came down it was 5.15pm.

We drove back into town, parked up and got some cash and then found the liquor store that we’d seen earlier. Very similar to Dan Murphy’s in Australia. Loads of wines from all over the world. Sadly the choice of beers in the cold room seemed fairly limited. In the end we settled on a 6-pack of the Great Western Brewing Original 16 Ale.

We returned to the hotel after a slight problem finding where we’d parked the car. This was interesting though as we found a couple more streets full of shops and restaurants that we hadn’t seen yesterday. There’s actually a wider choice of eating places than we’d appreciated from yesterday’s walk. Back at the hotel we managed to borrow two plates and two sets of cutlery from the breakfast room and then after a short while doing paperwork, we drove to Safeways. Managed to buy bread, chicken. spinach roll and a ready made salad. Returned to the hotel and had a nice relaxing meal in our room.