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Description

The Maligne River rushes through Maligne Canyon during my day of hiking in Jasper National Park.

Day 106 - Saturday 1 September

Jasper

I had another very good night’s sleep and didn’t wake until my alarm sounded at seven o’clock, after which I found that I was already wide awake, which was very unusual for me. I got up at a quarter past seven and went to the toilet and had a wash before going to the kitchen for breakfast. Today I sliced a banana to add to my muesli and made a whole pot of tea. My breakfast over I returned to the dormitory to sort out my rucksack for a day’s hike to Maligne Canyon and back. It still had all my clean clothes and trainers from yesterday in, so by the time I had got myself properly organised it was eight-fifty. As I walked down the hill towards Jasper I felt in urgent need of another pee, presumably because of all the tea I had consumed at breakfast, and I soon had to succumb and dive into the bushes. At the bottom of the hill I turned left onto Route 93 towards Jasper and then right onto Route 93A to walk alongside the Athabasca River, following this road until it crossed over the Miette River next to where it joined the Athabasca River. Shortly before this road intersected Route 16, the Yellowhead Highway, I turned right again and followed the road around as it swung left to cross over the Athabasca River, which was very fast-flowing at this point, and just after the bridge the trail that would take me to Maligne Canyon began.

As I started off on the trail a man and his young daughter were out walking their dog. The little girl had hold of the dog’s lead but as I passed them I startled a squirrel in a tree and it raced up the trunk to safety. The dog must have spotted the squirrel because I heard the dog barking and, when I turned round, it was to see that the dog had wrenched the lead out of the girl’s grasp and was racing towards the tree that the squirrel was in and barking like crazy. The girl was lying on the ground, presumably having been pulled over when the dog broke away, crying her eyes out and with her father now squatting down beside her and trying to comfort her. That brief moment of excitement over I continued along the trail, heavily used by horses and mountain bikes, but at least fairly dry underfoot in most places. As I skirted the edge of a copse by the riverside I heard a bird cry which sounded like a bird of prey, which became louder and louder as I continued. I looked up and saw a large, black bird with beautiful white chest plumage sitting on top of a telephone pole barely fifteen feet above me. I then noticed a similar bird on the next pole, this one sitting on a large, straggly and ungainly nest. They were watching me, dare I say it, like hawks but showed no signs of either fear or hostility. I slowly and carefully removed my pack from my back, trying to be as quiet as possible, laid it on the ground and equally carefully removed my camera and zoom lens, unfortunately having neglected to bring my 300mm lens with me. I had just fitted the zoom lens and begun to raise the camera towards the nearest bird when both of them took off simultaneously. Who says animals are dumb? I was no expert when it came to bird behaviour but as far as I could tell they were either engaged in a mating ritual or an argument because they continually circled around each other in close formation, weaving in and out of each other’s flight path and occasionally to within inches of one another. They were never more than a couple of hundred feet in the air and once they even returned to land back on their original perches, but took off again before I even had the time to say watch the birdie prior to taking a photograph. It was a magical thing to watch and I stood spellbound for a good fifteen minutes until they began to gradually circle further and further away until being completely obscured from my view by the trees. I didn’t know what type of bird they were but I had a shrewd suspicion that they were ospreys, knowing that they were supposedly quite common in Jasper National Park. But after the Vermilion Lakes debacle, when I had mistakenly thought a bird to be an osprey but which turned out to be nothing more than a common gull, I wouldn’t have been prepared to place a wager on my hunch.

My twitching at an end I continued on, roughly following the course of the river and with some lovely views across the valley towards Pyramid Mountain. Although there was still a lot of cloud cover and the sun was consequently shining only occasionally it was quite warm and what sunlight there was really highlighted the colours of the rocks and vegetation of this distinctive peak, a multitude of differing shades of greens, reds, browns and greys in an ever changing chiaroscuro as the shadows from the clouds scudded across its flanks. At one stage I began following some animal tracks in the dust of the trail and wondered for a second if they might be those of a bear, but this was simply wishful thinking on my part because they were not nearly big enough, not to mention being the wrong shape! They had probably been made by a deer or an elk, of which there were many in the area. I was beginning to feel that I was just destined never to see a bear in the wild and that it was only others who did so. Michaela and Petra had already seen two on separate occasions whilst cycling on the Icefields Parkway and last night when I got back to the hostel I saw again the guy who I had met on his way down Whistler Mountain, who told me that just five minutes after our paths had crossed he had caught sight of a bear in the woods just a little way above him but still very close to the path. He didn’t know if it had been a black, brown or grizzly variety because it had been much too close for comfort and he had been terrified and made his escape as quickly and unobtrusively as he could! From his description my guess was that it had been a black bear.

I carried on along the trail as it continued to follow the course of the Athabasca River, with more lovely views of the river and the mountains beyond. At long last the sun was making a concerted effort to break through the cloud cover and it looked as though it was going to develop into a beautiful afternoon. Parts of the trail hereabouts had been very badly cut up by horses’ hooves and mountain bike tyres and I had to pick my way along very carefully if I didn’t want to end up plastered in mud. I emerged from the woods to cross over Maligne Road just after it had turned off from Route 16 and then re-entered the woods until the path reached the bridge over the foaming waters of the Maligne River. It was most definitely now a lovely day and the sun beat down strongly, albeit in rather dappled fashion as the trail continued through the woods. There was another fabulous view back across the river towards Pyramid Mountain, which I paused for a while to admire and take a photograph. Shortly after that the trail parted company with the river to climb up through a steep-sided gorge with lots of streams tumbling down the hillside to feed the river below before it emerged above the lower canyon and a bridge spanning the river. There were quite a lot of visitors at this point, all coming down the hill, presumably to return to their vehicles.

I climbed further, up to the top of the canyon, from where there was a superb view of the opposite, sheer-sided walls of the canyon. The trail dropped down again, close to river level, to a point from where there was a stunning view of the cascading green and white waters of the Maligne River, surging through a very narrow section of the canyon. Still towering above all else was Pyramid Mountain, framed against a sky of deepest blue and liberally scattered with billowing white clouds. The path now descended right down to the level of the river to a point where it crashed over a small waterfall. Here I performed some daredevil photography before continuing once more. As I walked further along the canyon the walls became very sheer indeed and had been eroded into some fantastic shapes and formations by the water, and with tree roots pushing through and moss and lichen clinging to the rock surface it looked particularly unusual. A few yards later I arrived at a point where an underground river poured out from a hole in the canyon wall to feed the Maligne River. This was apparently an outpouring from Medicine Lake, some sixteen kilometres further upstream. There was also a lot of undercutting of the rock by the water at this lower level, creating enormous overhangs. The canyon now became deeper and narrower and it was possible to see where the river had eroded the rocks over the millennia, often into more fantastic whirlpools similar to those I had seen at Athabasca Falls. Water also poured down from the tops of the cliffs and plunged into the chasm to further feed the river. As I neared the car park beside the upper canyon the pathway became much more congested with visitors, and allied to the fact that the canyon was still growing ever steeper and narrower the higher I climbed it made this last section of the hike especially taxing.

I finally reached the bridge over the deepest part of Maligne Canyon, which I believe was 51 metres, where there was also a thunderous waterfall. I continued on up to the final bridge, easing my way past the throngs of tourists who were content to look only at the topmost hundred metres of the canyon. It was extremely narrow at the top, only about two metres from side to side, and two boulders had fallen down from above and become lodged in the crevice between the walls to form a rock bridge. On the nearest boulder moss now grew all over the rock and there was even a small tree which had taken root and was sprouting from the top of it. When I finally arrived at the very top of the canyon it gave no hint of the wonders that were to be found lower down although there was, not surprisingly, a gift shop! I confess that I did venture inside to have a look at the books, in one of which I successfully identified that the birds of prey I had seen performing their aerial acrobatics this morning had indeed been ospreys. Allan Maybury, eat your heart out!

It had been one o’clock when I arrived at the start of the canyon, or the end depending on which way you looked at it, and the walk had taken me three and half hours. I sat down at a picnic table to have a lunch of bread and cheese and some of my beef sausage. I was soon joined by another member of the local avifauna, a large, glossy black raven which was not the least bit afraid of me and was apparently anxious to share my feast, even to the extent that it had the audacity to hop up on the table right beside me. Once I had finished my lunch I pored over my maps to work out the best way to return to Jasper without having to retrace my steps. Just as I had decided which way to go I saw the English couple with their bikes again. They had just ridden up here from the town and were planning to go and take a look at the canyon. I told them to make sure that they walked all the way down if they wanted to escape all the motor tourists. Before returning to Jasper I crossed over to the Maligne Canyon Youth Hostel to see if I could book a bed for tomorrow night, but it was closed. They would be open between seven o’clock and nine o’clock tomorrow morning so I would have to try then. Tonight would be my third and final permitted night at Whistler Mountain Hostel and my plan was to cycle to Maligne Canyon tomorrow and then stay the night at this hostel on the way back before leaving for British Columbia the following morning.

I walked along Maligne Road and over the bridge until I came to the trail once again. From here it was 10.4 kilometres back to my starting point at the bridge across the Athabasca River and there was very little worthy of comment. The entire walk was through the forest and there was very little to see in the way of views. Much of the trail had again been badly cut up by horses and mountain bikes and it proved to be a long and boring walk on which I tried to keep myself entertained by looking out for bears amongst the trees. If ever I was to come across one in the wild then these forested hills seemed a more likely place than most. But even without a bear warning bell jingling around my neck there were none to be seen. I couldn’t quite make up my mind as to what my overriding emotion was at this outcome; relief or disappointment. The one thing that did surprise me was the large number of fallen trees and it was interesting to see how these were slowly being reclaimed by the forest, decomposing into the ground and providing nutrients for the generation of new life.

I arrived back at the bridge after an hour and three quarters, where I sat down to remove my boots and shake out all the debris that had accumulated in them, the perennial problem that I found with walking in shorts. By four o’clock I was back in Jasper and I made first of all for the supermarket to purchase some more food supplies and then tracked down a camera shop where I bought another two rolls of film. My shopping completed by a quarter to five I headed over to the Maligne Lake Tours office and treated myself to a ride back to Whistler Mountain Hostel on the shuttle bus. I had already walked about thirty kilometres today and was feeling pretty tired, so I didn’t much relish the prospect of the steep climb up the hill at the end of it all.

The English guy who had seen the bear on Whistler Mountain yesterday was also waiting for the bus and we got chatting. He said that he had been in Canada since 26th May, a week after I had arrived, and was not going back home until the end of October. When we arrived back at the hostel I went straight to the dormitory, only to discover that the new bed that I had taken this morning before I left had now been taken over by someone else and that my sleeping bag and sheet sleeping bag had just been chucked onto a table at the other side of the room. When I had registered this morning I was informed that the bed I had slept in for the last two nights had been inadvertently allocated to another hosteller and I was told to take Bed 8, the one next to it. When I returned to the dormitory to move my stuff Bed 8 was already occupied by the aforementioned Englishman, who said he had been under the impression that this bottom bunk that was now supposed to mine was Bed 7, which he had been assigned to. I didn’t really bother me that much and so I moved my gear onto this real Bed 7, the upper bunk. This evening it was this upper bunk that had now been occupied by someone else. I returned to the reception desk once more and explained all this to the manager, and she told me to take Bed 8 which my name was down for. I returned again to the dorm, moved all my stuff back onto Bed 8 and then had to go and find the English guy to tell him that he needed to go and sort things out for himself at the front desk. It turned out that he should have been in Bed 9 not Bed 7, and that he had probably taken my Bed 8 because he didn’t want to be in an upper bunk!

Having finally managed to get that all sorted satisfactorily it was time to head to the kitchen to start preparing my latest culinary masterpiece. No prizes for guessing that spaghetti was on the menu yet again, this time accompanied by a chicken sauce of my own creation. I cut the breast from the bone of my chicken portion, which provided more than enough meat without having to mess about trying to get every last morsel off the bone. I fried the chopped onion in margarine, added the cubed chicken and then decided to add a little extra flavour with some garlic salt from the free food cupboard of odds and sods left behind by previous hostellers. I shook the pot gently over the frying pan but, to my horror, instead of coming out of the container in a slow trickle an enormous glob of congealed garlic salt plopped out and went straight into the pan. I managed to retrieve the bulk of it but there remained a significant amount still mixed in with the sizzling chicken and onions. Now I like a reasonable amount of garlic but the same cannot be said for everybody. But it was nonetheless hilarious to see people’s reactions and their noses twitching furiously as the overpowering smell of garlic wafted around the common room! Despite this excess of garlic it turned out to be an excellent sauce and once again drew many an envious glance and admiring comment from my fellow chefs. It even had the manageress come out from behind her desk and into the kitchen to investigate the smell!

Once again I had quite a wait for a sink to become available to do my washing up, during which time I got talking with a German guy and a charming, dark-haired French girl with the most delicious, husky voice. She told us that she had been white water rafting on the Maligne River this afternoon and whilst it had been good fun it was not all that exciting because it was near the end of the season and the water level was beginning to drop. As soon as a sink became vacant I broke off from our conversation to do my chores and then went for a shower and a shave. I then packed my panniers ready for the morning and returned to the kitchen, at which point that I realised just how all-pervading the smell of my earlier garlic salt spillage was; it really hit me when I walked back into the room!
I sat down with Jeanette and Anne-Marie, two of the English girls I had met on the previous nights, and tried to continue with my diary, but it was extremely difficult to concentrate whilst they were busy chattering, and once their two friends arrived it became impossible and I gave up even trying. Jeanette and Anne-Marie were also hoping to move to Maligne Canyon Hostel tomorrow as they too were due to be kicked out of Whistler Mountain Hostel after completing their three night quota. Jeanette told us that her parents ran a guest house at Sidmouth in Devon and she regaled us with some of the humorous and risqué stories of the goings-on that frequently took place beneath its roof. At half past eleven I made my excuses and retired to bed. When I got to the dormitory it was to find that the upper bunk next to mine was occupied by a woman, the female dormitory now being full and the overspill was being housed in the men’s dormitory. You’ve been eating garlic she said in a most unfriendly and accusing manner. All I felt inclined to do was to congratulate her on her perspicacious olfactory senses and climb into my sleeping bag without another word. One guy was already sound asleep and snoring incredibly loudly, definitely a leading contender for the title of the World’s Loudest Snorer, but even he was unable to prevent me from dropping off to sleep almost immediately at the end of a day of vigorous exercise and fresh air.

Description

The Maligne River rushes through Maligne Canyon during my day of hiking in Jasper National Park.

Day 106 - Saturday 1 September

Jasper

I had another very good night’s sleep and didn’t wake until my alarm sounded at seven o’clock, after which I found that I was already wide awake, which was very unusual for me. I got up at a quarter past seven and went to the toilet and had a wash before going to the kitchen for breakfast. Today I sliced a banana to add to my muesli and made a whole pot of tea. My breakfast over I returned to the dormitory to sort out my rucksack for a day’s hike to Maligne Canyon and back. It still had all my clean clothes and trainers from yesterday in, so by the time I had got myself properly organised it was eight-fifty. As I walked down the hill towards Jasper I felt in urgent need of another pee, presumably because of all the tea I had consumed at breakfast, and I soon had to succumb and dive into the bushes. At the bottom of the hill I turned left onto Route 93 towards Jasper and then right onto Route 93A to walk alongside the Athabasca River, following this road until it crossed over the Miette River next to where it joined the Athabasca River. Shortly before this road intersected Route 16, the Yellowhead Highway, I turned right again and followed the road around as it swung left to cross over the Athabasca River, which was very fast-flowing at this point, and just after the bridge the trail that would take me to Maligne Canyon began.

As I started off on the trail a man and his young daughter were out walking their dog. The little girl had hold of the dog’s lead but as I passed them I startled a squirrel in a tree and it raced up the trunk to safety. The dog must have spotted the squirrel because I heard the dog barking and, when I turned round, it was to see that the dog had wrenched the lead out of the girl’s grasp and was racing towards the tree that the squirrel was in and barking like crazy. The girl was lying on the ground, presumably having been pulled over when the dog broke away, crying her eyes out and with her father now squatting down beside her and trying to comfort her. That brief moment of excitement over I continued along the trail, heavily used by horses and mountain bikes, but at least fairly dry underfoot in most places. As I skirted the edge of a copse by the riverside I heard a bird cry which sounded like a bird of prey, which became louder and louder as I continued. I looked up and saw a large, black bird with beautiful white chest plumage sitting on top of a telephone pole barely fifteen feet above me. I then noticed a similar bird on the next pole, this one sitting on a large, straggly and ungainly nest. They were watching me, dare I say it, like hawks but showed no signs of either fear or hostility. I slowly and carefully removed my pack from my back, trying to be as quiet as possible, laid it on the ground and equally carefully removed my camera and zoom lens, unfortunately having neglected to bring my 300mm lens with me. I had just fitted the zoom lens and begun to raise the camera towards the nearest bird when both of them took off simultaneously. Who says animals are dumb? I was no expert when it came to bird behaviour but as far as I could tell they were either engaged in a mating ritual or an argument because they continually circled around each other in close formation, weaving in and out of each other’s flight path and occasionally to within inches of one another. They were never more than a couple of hundred feet in the air and once they even returned to land back on their original perches, but took off again before I even had the time to say watch the birdie prior to taking a photograph. It was a magical thing to watch and I stood spellbound for a good fifteen minutes until they began to gradually circle further and further away until being completely obscured from my view by the trees. I didn’t know what type of bird they were but I had a shrewd suspicion that they were ospreys, knowing that they were supposedly quite common in Jasper National Park. But after the Vermilion Lakes debacle, when I had mistakenly thought a bird to be an osprey but which turned out to be nothing more than a common gull, I wouldn’t have been prepared to place a wager on my hunch.

My twitching at an end I continued on, roughly following the course of the river and with some lovely views across the valley towards Pyramid Mountain. Although there was still a lot of cloud cover and the sun was consequently shining only occasionally it was quite warm and what sunlight there was really highlighted the colours of the rocks and vegetation of this distinctive peak, a multitude of differing shades of greens, reds, browns and greys in an ever changing chiaroscuro as the shadows from the clouds scudded across its flanks. At one stage I began following some animal tracks in the dust of the trail and wondered for a second if they might be those of a bear, but this was simply wishful thinking on my part because they were not nearly big enough, not to mention being the wrong shape! They had probably been made by a deer or an elk, of which there were many in the area. I was beginning to feel that I was just destined never to see a bear in the wild and that it was only others who did so. Michaela and Petra had already seen two on separate occasions whilst cycling on the Icefields Parkway and last night when I got back to the hostel I saw again the guy who I had met on his way down Whistler Mountain, who told me that just five minutes after our paths had crossed he had caught sight of a bear in the woods just a little way above him but still very close to the path. He didn’t know if it had been a black, brown or grizzly variety because it had been much too close for comfort and he had been terrified and made his escape as quickly and unobtrusively as he could! From his description my guess was that it had been a black bear.

I carried on along the trail as it continued to follow the course of the Athabasca River, with more lovely views of the river and the mountains beyond. At long last the sun was making a concerted effort to break through the cloud cover and it looked as though it was going to develop into a beautiful afternoon. Parts of the trail hereabouts had been very badly cut up by horses’ hooves and mountain bike tyres and I had to pick my way along very carefully if I didn’t want to end up plastered in mud. I emerged from the woods to cross over Maligne Road just after it had turned off from Route 16 and then re-entered the woods until the path reached the bridge over the foaming waters of the Maligne River. It was most definitely now a lovely day and the sun beat down strongly, albeit in rather dappled fashion as the trail continued through the woods. There was another fabulous view back across the river towards Pyramid Mountain, which I paused for a while to admire and take a photograph. Shortly after that the trail parted company with the river to climb up through a steep-sided gorge with lots of streams tumbling down the hillside to feed the river below before it emerged above the lower canyon and a bridge spanning the river. There were quite a lot of visitors at this point, all coming down the hill, presumably to return to their vehicles.

I climbed further, up to the top of the canyon, from where there was a superb view of the opposite, sheer-sided walls of the canyon. The trail dropped down again, close to river level, to a point from where there was a stunning view of the cascading green and white waters of the Maligne River, surging through a very narrow section of the canyon. Still towering above all else was Pyramid Mountain, framed against a sky of deepest blue and liberally scattered with billowing white clouds. The path now descended right down to the level of the river to a point where it crashed over a small waterfall. Here I performed some daredevil photography before continuing once more. As I walked further along the canyon the walls became very sheer indeed and had been eroded into some fantastic shapes and formations by the water, and with tree roots pushing through and moss and lichen clinging to the rock surface it looked particularly unusual. A few yards later I arrived at a point where an underground river poured out from a hole in the canyon wall to feed the Maligne River. This was apparently an outpouring from Medicine Lake, some sixteen kilometres further upstream. There was also a lot of undercutting of the rock by the water at this lower level, creating enormous overhangs. The canyon now became deeper and narrower and it was possible to see where the river had eroded the rocks over the millennia, often into more fantastic whirlpools similar to those I had seen at Athabasca Falls. Water also poured down from the tops of the cliffs and plunged into the chasm to further feed the river. As I neared the car park beside the upper canyon the pathway became much more congested with visitors, and allied to the fact that the canyon was still growing ever steeper and narrower the higher I climbed it made this last section of the hike especially taxing.

I finally reached the bridge over the deepest part of Maligne Canyon, which I believe was 51 metres, where there was also a thunderous waterfall. I continued on up to the final bridge, easing my way past the throngs of tourists who were content to look only at the topmost hundred metres of the canyon. It was extremely narrow at the top, only about two metres from side to side, and two boulders had fallen down from above and become lodged in the crevice between the walls to form a rock bridge. On the nearest boulder moss now grew all over the rock and there was even a small tree which had taken root and was sprouting from the top of it. When I finally arrived at the very top of the canyon it gave no hint of the wonders that were to be found lower down although there was, not surprisingly, a gift shop! I confess that I did venture inside to have a look at the books, in one of which I successfully identified that the birds of prey I had seen performing their aerial acrobatics this morning had indeed been ospreys. Allan Maybury, eat your heart out!

It had been one o’clock when I arrived at the start of the canyon, or the end depending on which way you looked at it, and the walk had taken me three and half hours. I sat down at a picnic table to have a lunch of bread and cheese and some of my beef sausage. I was soon joined by another member of the local avifauna, a large, glossy black raven which was not the least bit afraid of me and was apparently anxious to share my feast, even to the extent that it had the audacity to hop up on the table right beside me. Once I had finished my lunch I pored over my maps to work out the best way to return to Jasper without having to retrace my steps. Just as I had decided which way to go I saw the English couple with their bikes again. They had just ridden up here from the town and were planning to go and take a look at the canyon. I told them to make sure that they walked all the way down if they wanted to escape all the motor tourists. Before returning to Jasper I crossed over to the Maligne Canyon Youth Hostel to see if I could book a bed for tomorrow night, but it was closed. They would be open between seven o’clock and nine o’clock tomorrow morning so I would have to try then. Tonight would be my third and final permitted night at Whistler Mountain Hostel and my plan was to cycle to Maligne Canyon tomorrow and then stay the night at this hostel on the way back before leaving for British Columbia the following morning.

I walked along Maligne Road and over the bridge until I came to the trail once again. From here it was 10.4 kilometres back to my starting point at the bridge across the Athabasca River and there was very little worthy of comment. The entire walk was through the forest and there was very little to see in the way of views. Much of the trail had again been badly cut up by horses and mountain bikes and it proved to be a long and boring walk on which I tried to keep myself entertained by looking out for bears amongst the trees. If ever I was to come across one in the wild then these forested hills seemed a more likely place than most. But even without a bear warning bell jingling around my neck there were none to be seen. I couldn’t quite make up my mind as to what my overriding emotion was at this outcome; relief or disappointment. The one thing that did surprise me was the large number of fallen trees and it was interesting to see how these were slowly being reclaimed by the forest, decomposing into the ground and providing nutrients for the generation of new life.

I arrived back at the bridge after an hour and three quarters, where I sat down to remove my boots and shake out all the debris that had accumulated in them, the perennial problem that I found with walking in shorts. By four o’clock I was back in Jasper and I made first of all for the supermarket to purchase some more food supplies and then tracked down a camera shop where I bought another two rolls of film. My shopping completed by a quarter to five I headed over to the Maligne Lake Tours office and treated myself to a ride back to Whistler Mountain Hostel on the shuttle bus. I had already walked about thirty kilometres today and was feeling pretty tired, so I didn’t much relish the prospect of the steep climb up the hill at the end of it all.

The English guy who had seen the bear on Whistler Mountain yesterday was also waiting for the bus and we got chatting. He said that he had been in Canada since 26th May, a week after I had arrived, and was not going back home until the end of October. When we arrived back at the hostel I went straight to the dormitory, only to discover that the new bed that I had taken this morning before I left had now been taken over by someone else and that my sleeping bag and sheet sleeping bag had just been chucked onto a table at the other side of the room. When I had registered this morning I was informed that the bed I had slept in for the last two nights had been inadvertently allocated to another hosteller and I was told to take Bed 8, the one next to it. When I returned to the dormitory to move my stuff Bed 8 was already occupied by the aforementioned Englishman, who said he had been under the impression that this bottom bunk that was now supposed to mine was Bed 7, which he had been assigned to. I didn’t really bother me that much and so I moved my gear onto this real Bed 7, the upper bunk. This evening it was this upper bunk that had now been occupied by someone else. I returned to the reception desk once more and explained all this to the manager, and she told me to take Bed 8 which my name was down for. I returned again to the dorm, moved all my stuff back onto Bed 8 and then had to go and find the English guy to tell him that he needed to go and sort things out for himself at the front desk. It turned out that he should have been in Bed 9 not Bed 7, and that he had probably taken my Bed 8 because he didn’t want to be in an upper bunk!

Having finally managed to get that all sorted satisfactorily it was time to head to the kitchen to start preparing my latest culinary masterpiece. No prizes for guessing that spaghetti was on the menu yet again, this time accompanied by a chicken sauce of my own creation. I cut the breast from the bone of my chicken portion, which provided more than enough meat without having to mess about trying to get every last morsel off the bone. I fried the chopped onion in margarine, added the cubed chicken and then decided to add a little extra flavour with some garlic salt from the free food cupboard of odds and sods left behind by previous hostellers. I shook the pot gently over the frying pan but, to my horror, instead of coming out of the container in a slow trickle an enormous glob of congealed garlic salt plopped out and went straight into the pan. I managed to retrieve the bulk of it but there remained a significant amount still mixed in with the sizzling chicken and onions. Now I like a reasonable amount of garlic but the same cannot be said for everybody. But it was nonetheless hilarious to see people’s reactions and their noses twitching furiously as the overpowering smell of garlic wafted around the common room! Despite this excess of garlic it turned out to be an excellent sauce and once again drew many an envious glance and admiring comment from my fellow chefs. It even had the manageress come out from behind her desk and into the kitchen to investigate the smell!

Once again I had quite a wait for a sink to become available to do my washing up, during which time I got talking with a German guy and a charming, dark-haired French girl with the most delicious, husky voice. She told us that she had been white water rafting on the Maligne River this afternoon and whilst it had been good fun it was not all that exciting because it was near the end of the season and the water level was beginning to drop. As soon as a sink became vacant I broke off from our conversation to do my chores and then went for a shower and a shave. I then packed my panniers ready for the morning and returned to the kitchen, at which point that I realised just how all-pervading the smell of my earlier garlic salt spillage was; it really hit me when I walked back into the room!
I sat down with Jeanette and Anne-Marie, two of the English girls I had met on the previous nights, and tried to continue with my diary, but it was extremely difficult to concentrate whilst they were busy chattering, and once their two friends arrived it became impossible and I gave up even trying. Jeanette and Anne-Marie were also hoping to move to Maligne Canyon Hostel tomorrow as they too were due to be kicked out of Whistler Mountain Hostel after completing their three night quota. Jeanette told us that her parents ran a guest house at Sidmouth in Devon and she regaled us with some of the humorous and risqué stories of the goings-on that frequently took place beneath its roof. At half past eleven I made my excuses and retired to bed. When I got to the dormitory it was to find that the upper bunk next to mine was occupied by a woman, the female dormitory now being full and the overspill was being housed in the men’s dormitory. You’ve been eating garlic she said in a most unfriendly and accusing manner. All I felt inclined to do was to congratulate her on her perspicacious olfactory senses and climb into my sleeping bag without another word. One guy was already sound asleep and snoring incredibly loudly, definitely a leading contender for the title of the World’s Loudest Snorer, but even he was unable to prevent me from dropping off to sleep almost immediately at the end of a day of vigorous exercise and fresh air.