Dodging the heat while navigating flooded trails and a cornice in eastern Banff NP.
I would like to acknowledge that this hike past through the ancestral and traditional territories of Indigenous Peoples. The Blackfoot Confederacy, Tsuut’ina, Stoney (Ĩyãħé) Nakoda, Cree, Ktunaxa, and Métis who have called the Rocky Mountains home since time immemorial. I acknowledge the many Indigenous Peoples in Canada whose footsteps have marked these lands for generations and I am grateful to be a visitor in these lands.
The Sawback Range of mountains gets its name from the sawtooth like ridges that form the peaks of the mountains. The Canadian Rocky Mountains are divided into four parts, the Foothills, the Front Ranges, the Main Ranges and finally the Western Ranges. The western edge of the Rocky Mountains is the Rocky Mountain Trench which among other rivers contains the Columbia River. The Main Ranges are the highest mountains in the Rockies and are easily identified by their almost horizontal rock layers. Mt Temple and Castle Mt are distinctive Main Range Mountains easily seen from the the Trans Canada. Hiking in behind Castle Mountain one would see that the mountains change to having their west facing sloped angled (dipping) steeply, almost vertical leaving a sharp ridge or rocks that look much like the serrated teeth of a saw blade, hence the name Sawback. The name was given by James Hector while working for the Palliser Expedition and for whom Hector Lake was named after. Our hike would take place entirely in the Sawback Range.
This would be a summer of firsts for me when it came to backpacking. I had not one but two multi day backpacking trips planned with groups of five. I had done a couple of three person trips, one on the Great Divide Trail Section D in 2022 and another on the Rockwall in Kootenay NP with Ken and his brother. But on neither trip was I the lead organizer. Both trips were essentially planned as solo hikes but with other people sharing the same itinerary. For the summer of 2024 I had a five day trip planned on the Sawback in Banff NP and 11 day trip on the Jasper South Boundary Trail with groups of five.
The other big change is that I was the principle organizer for both trips. While I hesitate to call myself the trip leader, I did set the itinerary, did all the bookings and had put together a back up plan for both trips. So I did feel a bit of pressure to ensure that everyone had a good time, especially with some people spending money to travel to take part in a trip I planned.
The trip on the Sawback started out with Ken and I discussing at school about doing a summer backpacking trip together. We had done the Sawback Trail from Moose Meadows over Pulsatilla Pass to Lake Louise in 2019. Due to very poor weather we had to alter our itinerary and missed hiking up to Badger Pass one of the premier destinations in the area. Coincidentally in 2020 after our first Sawback hike I took the time to sketch, actually a nine slide PowerPoint presentation, of a hike in the Sawback that comprised doing a loop going over Badger Pass. I resurrected the plan and shared with Ken. Ken approved of the plan and then this is were things started to get interesting.
We ended up modifying my original plan. I was not really married to the plan, the PowerPoint served as a reminder of a hike that I wanted to complete in the future, and now the future had arrived. The new plan had more balanced days. As Ken and I discussed the hike a fellow teacher, Spencer, said he was interested in going on the hike with the two of us, that should have been an immediate red flag wanting to hike we us, but we said yes. After that Ken said he talked to his long time best friend Chris, friends since grade 2 back in Oakville, and that Chris was interested in joining us. I made it a five person hike when I invited Don on the trip. I had met Don the previous summer on a trip I did on the Rockwall with Margaux. I had known Don for a total of a day and half but we had got on very well. We had kept in touch on Facebook and so I took and chance and asked Don if he was interested in the hike. Don said yes and then we were five.
When it came time for booking the campsites this was the easiest bookings I had for the upcoming summer. The Sawback while spectacular is not a high demand location. I was able to easily get three sites per campground with the trip set for a July 8th departure.
We had a low snow year for the winter but then as spring hit Mother Nature stormed back into the picture with a vengeance. Near record spring snow falls created a potential obstacle to our well laid plans. There is a cornice at Badger Pass that is known to last well into the summer hiking season. I had two sources for the warning of the cornice. The first was from the guide book “The Canadian Rockies Trail Guide” by Brian Patton and Bart Robinson.
The second source was a local old timer who I met on the trail. When I told him of the plan for the trip his first response was to warn me of the cornice. With the combination of heavy snowfall and then a cool spring I felt that there was a good chance that the cornice may impede our advance down the trail. This motivated me to come up with a couple of Back Up Plans in case we could not safely navigate cornice. I made two Back Up Plans which would be implemented on Day 2 when would would encounter the cornice.
We did run into a bit of conundrum with our Back Up Plans. If we book the campgrounds for our Back Up Plan but do not use them, then we have taken away the opportunity for others to have used the campgrounds. But, if we got blocked by the cornice we felt it would be too far to hike back to the car so we would have to Bandit Camp somewhere. Of the two options we felt it would be better to have unused campgrounds than Bandit Camp, so I booked Back Up Plan B.
With the big picture organizing all completed it was time to get myself ready for the hike. First on the list was preparing my food which meant baking up some Logan Bread and drying both some pasta for dinner and fruit for snacks, really do not want to get scurvy on the trail.
On this trip I would be using my ultra light Zpacks Duplex Tent which I would be sharing with Spencer. I was a little sloppy in my gear prep. This would be my first trip of the year. Normally I would have preferred to go on a little trip to make sure I have my gear all sorted out. I ended up only making one error which was just a little critical, I forgot the tent pegs. Luckily people have the habit of carrying more pegs than they need sow I was able to borrow enough pegs but it was a dumb mistake. Not having pegs could have caused real issues as the Zpack tent is not self standing and relies on staking out to keep its shape.
The biggest challenge we encountered would be the weather. After a very cool and wet spring leading right up to the week prior to departure Mother Nature seemed to have it in for us and cranked up the heat. The spring had been so cool that I had friends who had back country reservations cancelled by Parks Canada in the last week of June due to avalanche hazards. This was just a week and a bit before our trip. The heat skyrocketed to above normal just in time for our hike, see graph below. We managed the heat pretty well but on Day 3 we had to shade breaks to try and moderate our temperatures.
WeatherSpark.com
Our trip started July 8th, the day the heat was turned on.
The trip was not perfect but plans have already been made for Season 2 of Group Hiking for the summer of 2025.
What we learned:
- Need to slow down when packing and make sure I touch all the items on my list to confirm I have them.
- Successful group trips means compromising and realizing what you enjoy may not be the same for everyone so just chill out and go with the flow.
- Hooded sun shirts paired with a cap rock.
Day 1 Moose Meadows TH to Luellen Lake CG
Day 2 Luellen Lake CG to Bloc Lake Junction CG
Day 3 Bloc Lake Junction CG to Sawback Lake CG
Day 4 Sawback Lake CG to Mystic Valley CG
Day 5 Mystic Valley CG to Moose Meadows TH