North Boundary Trail: Day One

For this year's fastpacking adventure, I chose the North Boundary Trail which is close to 200 km in length, starts east of Jasper and runs west, popping out at the back of Mt Robson. I'd spent the Saturday running the Brazeau Loop (82 km) with Steve, Mike & Leslie so I spent Sunday in Jasper getting the final details of my trip organized and resting my legs. Parks Canada confirmed that no-one else was on the trail which is what I expected; it's a pretty remote place to wander and takes most people 10-12 days to backpack so isn't so popular these days. Which is a shame, as it's a beautiful location and is well signed.

After a good night's sleep at the Athabasca Hotel, I got dropped off at Celestine Lake Road by Mr Taxi and started to yell and holler my way on an old fire road so that I could access the trail. This area is prime black bear territory so I made lots of noise, especially as there was a lot of fresh bear scat on the trail. Snake Indian Falls was a little ways off the trail so I ducked down to take a look. The mist coming off felt nice seeing as it was turning out to be another hot day.

As I made my way to Willow Creek, I spent a bit of time in the horse camp as it was such a beautiful place. I opened the registry book that I found mounted on one of the trees and saw that a couple of wardens had travelled through this area 4 days before me to do some trail maintenance. I kept thinking that I might bump into them somewhere, but it wasn't to be. I was having a great time and found the running easy enough on my legs that I ended up doing 62 km but called it a day once I reached Blue Creek camp. I ended up setting up my tent in the horse camp as the creek crossing was way too dangerous to get to the hikers camp.