Wow! My first trip to Canada! I have never heard anything bad about Canada but no one ever told me how awesome it is! Everywhere we went there were beautiful mountains, the biggest lakes you have ever seen, fairies, nice people, Tim Hortons' (Canadian McDonalds?), and NO cops. I really feel like I saw most of British Colombia (see map below). The entire road trip was over 3,000 miles. Lucas and I used his Toyota pickup which never left us stranded and got decent gas mileage. Two essential items to any road trip are gas and beer and the Canadians know it. It was something like $5 a gallon for gas and 24 packs of beer were almost $50! Now I know you're saying "Oh but the exchange rate levels that out." Nope. Not when its only 7cents in our favor! Of the 12 days on the road, only 2 of them were pure drive days. Getting to Canada was an all day thing but I got to see the pan-handle of Idaho which I had never seen before. Very very pretty place. I could spend some serious time in Sand Point. We didnt go straight to the Bugaboos as planned cause Lucas thought he was getting sick. So we found ourselves sitting at the Black Rooster bar in Castlegar chatting with the bar tender. He suggested we head North to Valhalla Provincial Park and climb Gimli Peak. I had heard of Gimli peak from Fred Beckey's book so after sleeping in the parking lot, we took off. A VERY bumpy road got us to the TH where we could see the iconic, uniquely shaped mountain. 2 hours after leaving the car, we were on top via the East ridge. The SW ridge is the classic climb but since we didnt do any research on it and knew nothing about it, we just scrambled to the top. The beauty of this place was overwhelming. Everywhere we looked rocky peaks and beautiful glacier-carved valleys caught our eyes. Definitely not my last time there.
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| Our first glimpse of the mountains. |
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| Gimli |
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| The classic SW ridge climb is the obvious ridge just right of center in the photo. |
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| Some climbers. |
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| Another look at the SW ridge climb. |
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| The view when we got on top of the East ridge. |
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| Looking North-ish from the summit, waiting for Lucas. |
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| Summit Cairn or as the Canadians call them 'Inuksuk' |
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| Here comes Lucas. |
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| Posing with the summit register. |
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| The ice on this lake looks like fungus growing on the water. |
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