It rains again, another time. It is beginning to be usual to wake up under an annoying light rain. Our dreams about daylong hiking were gone in the exact moment we opened our eyes this morning, but this will not stop anyways.
We search trough maps and leaflets, hints from the visitor centers and in the end we decide: there is a lake along the road towards Field, Dog Lake, with no so much heightdrop, a loop not too long which will let us run away fast in case a heavy shower comes to happen.
We follow the signs from the highway and park in the classic parking lot at the beginning of the trail. It’s only the three of us, an RV and a truck. Hopefully we will be alone during our hike. We lace our boots and begin to walk.
After not more than a hundred meters, we get to a river which has not one but two bridges over it.
A shaky bridge over a wild river, Alaska? Nope, Dog Lake, Kootenay National Park Canada
Once we get over the two bridges, we get plunges in a thick forest, along a quite wide and flat trail at first which slowly get steeper and narrower, until it gets on top of the hill in a really narrow passage between trunks and trees, all of them covered in a thickk layer of greenish musk.
The landscape is really similiar to a tropical forest – I have never seen it, but it is how I think it would be! – and we walk on a soft terrain which gives way at every step, as a sign we are walking on layers and layers of what was once forest, as trees and leaves and trunks.
Just an hour more or less and we get to the lake, which we see just once we get on the very shore, out of the dense woods.
A realy angry duck atl Dog Lake, but she has all reason to be angry with us!
We walk along the shore, hoping to glimpse some bears or mooses on the opposite shore, but we are not so lucky today. There is an eerie silence, interrupted by just some bird twittering and we enjoy the moment. There is a couple of ducks or geese just meters from the shore, so we decide to get a little bit closer to take better photos, but once we get closer, one of them freak out and begin to yell at our very loudly,
We freeze, fearing we scared them, but it has no effect. So we begin to go away and…we understand the reason of the freaking out: we are maybe less than one meter away from her nice blue egg in her tiny nest!
Trying the slingshot: will we be able to reach the opposite shore?
We have fun for a good half an hour, trying the new slingshot and having a nice lunch with, guess what! bagels and hummus again.
And then it’s time to go back again, both because we still have to drive for a while and for the mosquitos which are giving us no truce. We decide for a longer trail on our way back, which probably will get around the little hill without getting to the top again.
Canadian trails punged in the woods
We walk longer on the way back, the trail back is almost twice as long as the way there, but it is so enjoyable and nice that we don’t even get notice both of the fatigue that little by little get in our legs, neither of the heat that is coming out as long as the clouds go away.
Soon we get to the main trail which runs along the river, up high almost half the height of the hill. We hear the river flowing down at the bottom, but we still don’t see it.
Then a detour let us going down towards the river and we finally see the bridge. It is quite a show, a movie scene almost.
Second bridge, it is unbelievable how this place can be fascinating
We take our time to cross the two bridges, a little bit too flexible to be able to resist at the violent winters and eventual floods.
Then we get again to the parking lot, to our car, we get to drive again: let’s go discover other amazing places!!!
AP
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