Berg Lake and Mt Robson Provincial Park
A ski tour to Berg Lake and the run to Jasper
Prelude
In this long and ambitious post, I attempt to: 1) entertain the people, 2) document my week for posterity, and 3) create an accurate trip report others can use. It covers my ski tour up to and around Berg Lake and my run over Yellowhead Pass to Jasper from the Berg Lake trailhead.
TLDR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m grateful to Tom and Peggy for hosting me in Valemount. Their knowledge and assistance made it easy for me to prep for this past 6-day backcountry leg of the adventure. Peggy gave me a ride to the Berg Lake trailhead, which was a great help too. By happenstance, Tom passed me on the highway today on his way to Calgary. He stopped to give me a clementine and chocolate, real high quality stuff, 72% dark, made in Switzerland, just what I like. At Berg Lake, I had the pleasure of sharing the Hargreaves Shelter with a man named Pascal whose company came as a welcome break from my solitude. Today, in Jasper I walked into an outdoor shop in desperate need of new running shoes. The owner Dave hooked me up with a pair of Norda sneakers and told me, “I’m your new biggest fan!” They were already half off, and he pitched in another $50 of his own. Then, Rudy a local legend of the mountains and friend of Tom and Peggy’s pitched in another $50. So a pair of sneakers that was originally $300 went down to $54.08. I was well willing to pay the listed price and will forward Dave and Rudy’s contributions to the GiveDirectly fundraiser. Finally, thanks to Brittany Andrews for opening up her home in Jasper and graciously hosting me. She has worked in Jasper for 12 years and I’m excited to get to know her.
Hasta luego Valemount
Tom and Peggy in the kitchen they built.
Tom and Peggy’s dog, Lucy.
Berg Lake Trail
I’d been looking forward to going to Berg Lake and seeing Mt Robson, the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies, ever since deciding to run north from Kamloops. Now the moment had finally arrived, and I could hardly believe it. Berg Lake lies right under Mt Robson and has a perfect view of it. After arriving at the trailhead, I hid my baby jogger behind a pile of rocks and then started skinning at about 8:40am.
The Berg Lake trail is the one of the most popular trails in the Canadian Rockies. Heavy foot traffic in the winter makes the snow path up to Kinney Lake well-packed.
The path across Kinney Lake. I arrived at Kinney around noon.
I continued past Kinney Lake and reached my next checkpoint, the Whitehorn Ranger station, at 1:30pm. The path was still pretty well-packed to this point. Beyond Whitehorn, a lone pair of snowshoe tracks remained.
Emperor Falls headwall.
White Falls.
Zoomed out view of white falls.
Berg Lake. Whoa nice glacier!
I arrived at the Hargreaves shelter on Berg Lake just before 6 pm after skinning all day. There, I was surprised to meet Pascal Esser, a man from you-guessed-it Munich, Germany. He flew to Vancouver for a machine learning conference and tacked on a trip to Mt Robson. He took a train from Vancouver to Valemount, hitchhiked from Valemount to Mt Robson Provincial Park, and did the hard work of breaking trail from Whitehorn all the way to the shelter with snowshoes! He aspired to do a solo climb of Robson and was waiting for a weather window. He and I ended up spending the next three nights at the shelter with plenty of time to get to know each other. He will complete his PhD in machine learning this year. We bonded over computer science, climbing, solo adventures, and the Uphill Athlete training programs among other things.
They called us “adventurous”!
Pascal got a shot of me.
Rearguard
After my first night at the Hargreaves shelter, I ventured out around Rearguard Mountain.
The snow felt extremely unstable to me all day, and my feelings were confirmed shortly after crossing Robson Lake. As I neared the toe of the Robson Glacier, I triggered a slide from below while traversing a small slope on a wind slab. It was fascinating to see the crack propagate across the hillside and would have been scary if I’d been in consequential terrain. As a result, I never ended up leaving the flats all day and kept my skins on.
The sheer walls of Rearguard Mountain carved out by glacier over the eons.
Ice caves at the toe of the Robson glacier!
The craggily blue glacial ice added shockingly brilliant color to an otherwise black and white landscape of snow and rock on a cloudy, windy day.
The following day, Pascal and I both rested all day in the Hargreaves Shelter. I reveled in my cozy sleeping bag with precios free time to my book. After my third night at the Hargreaves Shelter, I skied out first thing in the morning and made it to the highway by nightfall.
Road to Jasper
From the highway, I looked back to Robson one last time, yet it remained shrouded in clouds. Three days and the sublime massif never revealed its peak to me. I will have to return to see the mountain in all its glory. I can still say gladly that, even shrouded in clouds, Robson succeeded in stealing my imagination and taking my breath away. I have not been so entranced by a mountain since Tahoma (Rainier) when I moved to Seattle.
Leaving the Overlander Falls trailhead, my first morning on the highway proved to be almost as beautiful as my tour to Berg Lake.
The highway and railroad crisscross.
I finished my day running straight towards this beautiful behemoth, which turned out to be Mt Fitzwilliam. I spent the night at the Lucerne Campground.
This morning, just after leaving the Lucerne Campground, I got this unobstructed view of Yellowhead Mountain.
Welcome to Alberta!
Welcome to Jasper!
I got to Jasper with enough time to do some shopping. I only ended up going into one store, Wild Mountain, because I got to chatting with the owner, Dave, for over an hour. He had already heard about what I was doing through the grapevine and is a crazy runner himself. Among other things, he ran the Canadian Death Race where he met his wife and runs his age in kilometers every year on his birthday. In a few weeks, he’ll run a 63k on April 3— he’s turning 1.5 in marathons. He says, “The older I get, the faster I was.”
Serendipitously, Rudy also walked into the shop. Tom and Peggy had already told me all about Rudy. He moved to Canada from Austria and worked as a heli ski guide for a number of years until one day he quit when they tried sending him out with a group in terrible avalanche conditions. He has never commercially guided since but still loves skiing with all his heart and guides his friends. He owns a restaurant in a log building in Valemount called the Caribou grill.
Both he and Dave told me they’re in awe of what I’m doing, which was crazy to hear from two people who I am in awe of!! Dave told me, “I’m your new biggest fan!” He asked for my Instagram, and when I told him I haven’t been that active on it, he said, “that’s fine, I’m thinking about the future.” Dave and Rudy each pitched in $50 for my sneakers, which I’ll pass along to the GiveDirectly fundraiser. They made my day.
Postscript
Despite feeling sick of running when I left Valemount, I arrived in Jasper with fresh motivation. The run was breathtakingly beautiful. And my body seems to be holding up (🤜 on 🪵). It’s common to hear about the highs and lows of running ultramarathons, and I guess that happens on a much larger scale on an adventure like this (and in life in general). As for now, I can’t wait to run the Icefields parkway, but before starting I’ll take a few days to prepare mentally, physically, and logistically.