Hiking Club heads for Sulphur Skyline

Like pilgrims seeking enlightenment through exertion, we gather under a grey overcast sky at the front door of  Nature Calls, the office for Friends of Jasper National Park, summoned there by the shared urge to hike into the mountains.

This is the Thursday morning hiking club, not to be confused with the thrice-weekly introduction to Jasper’s Discovery Trail, the meet-and-greet for novice hikers and newcomers, or with the Friends’ various interpretive offerings. The hiking club is for people who want to hike, and hike some more, regardless of the weather.  

The Opal Hills are out, declared off-limits by Parks Canada after hikers reported aggressive behaviour from a foraging grizzly bear.  Lisa, our guide, suggests Miette Hot Springs and the Sulphur Skyline Trail.

There are nine of us, and we press ahead in three vehicles. Lisa and Jeff, the assistant guide in one with two other hikers; two women in a truck and the rest in a sedan showing its Ontario roots – flecks of rust blossoming around the wheel wells.

A young couple with kids aged two and four is determined to make the hike.  It entails a 700 meter gain spread over several kilometers, the last 100 meters or so above the tree line exposed to the elements, which are massing to unleash rain and snow. The couple decides to hike on their own, at their own pace.

The map published by the Friends of Jasper National Park promises that the winding 17 km road up to the hot springs from Highway 16 is renowned for black bear sightings; it cautions against stopping to feed the animals which are habituated to humans and handouts.

“A fed bear is a dead bear,” is the pamphlet’s ominous warning. We see none. Nor are there any bighorn sheep hanging about the pool area, waiting to be photographed.

The coffee shop is still closed, and we move on without the benefit of a caffeine jolt. The broad, paved trail climbs gently out of the parking lot, then narrows to a stony track as it switches back and forth up a steep side hill above the hot springs.

The air is cool and damp, but hiking warms us and clothing is shed at regular intervals, until we’re all down to base layers. We fantasize about plunging in to the soothing warmth of the hot springs after the hike, but no one has brought swimwear, and some have to be at afternoon jobs. 

The mix of hikers reveals a neat cross section of Jasper’s summer population: part-time and full-time workers with odd days off, juggling two or three jobs, and a few visitors to the park. 

Myriad wildflowers colour the trail margin: Indian paintbrush, a purple haze of scorpion flowers, blazing tiger lilies, golden arnica, columbine, delicate and nodding, and heaths: purple and white heather, which I mistake for crowberry, Labrador tea, harebells and mountain blue bells that looks like borage, gone wild. 

Scattered here and there in the profusion of vegetation are blue lupines, the only plant that I have found from the Arctic to the Andes, where it is cultivated and consumed after soaking to remove bitter alkaloids, as a protein-rich legume that fixes nitrogen in the poor soil.

Above the tree line are small mounds of moss campion, another reminder of the Andes where it grows in vast clumps above 4,000 meters. At the summit, we are mobbed by ground squirrels, habituated to snacks passed out by hikers. They scamper up pant legs and poke in to backpacks, searching for rewards of nuts, raisins.

Clouds swallow the view and we begin our retreat through a shower of snow and rain.  Just below Shuey Pass and a trail that branches off to Mystery Lake, we meet the determined family making their way up the trail that is increasingly slick with rain. The four-year-old is being bribed at every rest bench with chocolate, which he carries in a quid in his cheek.  

We are almost of the mountain when one of our party, a woman with dreams of  living in Peru, stumbles and pitches headfirst down the trail. She scrapes her hands but manages to hold her face off the hard ground.  Other than stiffness that begins to settle in on the drive back to Jasper, there is no physical reminder of the morning on the mountain.