14. Mount Robson Provincial Park

From Jasper, I headed west to get out of the Rockies. Friends recommended making a stop at Mount Robson Provincial Park and doing the Berg Lake Trail there.

Since the weather was supposed to be great for a few days, I decided to go for it.

The Berg Lake Trail is a hiking trail that covers 21km and nearly 800 meters of elevation to a campground right by the mountain lake - a total of 42km. Since everything was booked, I decided to do it all in one day.

I started at 6am in the morning. After about 50 minutes, I reached the first lake - Kinney Lake.

At that early hour, there were hardly any people around - just one German girl who I ended up hiking with because we were going at the same pace.

The trail then took us through the Valley of a Thousand Falls, a valley with many waterfalls. This is one of them.

And then we continued across a plateau before reaching the front end of Berg Lake.

The campground we had as our destination was on the other side of the lake. Once we arrived there, we had a beautiful view of the lake and glacier, as well as the backside of Mt Robson.

It took us about five and a half hours to get to this point. Since it was starting to get warm, we decided to take a quick swim in the lake - cold but refreshing.

After lunch and a bit of sitting in the sun, we started the return journey.

The way back took us another five hours. Going downhill suddenly felt much longer, as we had been hiking all day. Especially the last kilometer felt endless.

After eleven and a half hours, we finally made it back to the parking lot and successfully completed the hike. Exhausted but happy, we quickly went to the visitor center and then to the warm shower at the campground.

Mt Robson from below - the mountain is only completely cloud-free about 60 days a year.