A lake, then a pass, then a lake.
Day 2 Mystic Valley CG to Luellen Lake CG, 21.3 km, 690 m elevation gain, 645 m elevation loss, 7 hrs 51 min.
The plan was to make the short hike to Mystic Lake and enjoy breakfast lakeside. It is only an 800 m hike to the junction for Mystic lake with another 500 m to the lake.
We left camp at about 7:05 am. It took less than 15 minutes to arrive at Mystic Lake. The lake was magnificent in the morning light with not a breath of wind leaving the surface perfectly reflective.
We stayed at Mystic Lake enjoying the view for about 40 minutes. We hit the trail about 8:10. Next stop Mystic Pass a quick 3.6 km with 280 m elevation gain.
It took us just a little over one hour to make our way from Mystic Lake up to Mystic Pass. I have been to Mystic Pass three times. Maybe arriving at 9:15 am was not a great plan. It was a little chilly at the pass and the magic was missing. The sun just starting to peak over the mountains and therefore it had not had the opportunity to warm they air that had cooled off overnight. We stopped for just a couple of photos before heading back down the trail.
The pass is fairly flat for about about 1 km. As you approach the forest leaving the alpine behind the trail suddenly heads steeply downhill.
The trail on the north side of Mystic is quite steep. I was congratulated more than once for choosing to go clockwise on our route and therefore going over Mystic Pass from south to north and down the steep side. I would be hard pressed to book a trip going the other way as this would be a brutal but not impossible climb.
We passed a family of 7 going up near the bottom of the climb. They had some young kids maybe preteens and everyone had a pack. The dad was leading the way and he was fairly chatty but no one else was. It looked like a little bit of a death march. As the mom went passed I figured her pack must have been at least 85 L. She did not respond to me when I said hello just stayed focus on the ground in front of her feet.
During lunch a father/daughter duo came by. They were hiking the same loop as us except the other way meaning we should meet them again at some point. They took an extended break at Larry’s Camp before tackling the climb to the Mystic Pass. Just before we packed up four young people passed by heading for Luellen Lake. They would feature heavily in the events of our day. We spent about an hour at Larry’s Camp before heading back out onto the trail at 12:30 pm.
The most exciting thing on the trail was when we passed a mother and her 10 year old daughter getting water from Johnston Creek. As we moved down the trail we saw the dad with two young boys. They were headed for Johnston Creek CG which was about 2 km short of our destination at Luellen Lake CG.
About an hour out of Larry’s Camp the trail has been recently rerouted to pass to a section much higher on the slope. It is a bit of an abrupt climb then a nice undulating trail before the trail drops and quickly rejoins the original trail. It was just as we were rejoining the original trail that we passed by the four young people who had hiked passed us during lunch. They had obviously persisted on using the original trail instead of the bypass built by Parks Canada.
There is a short stiff little climb from the creek up over a little headwall before we drop down into the campground at Luellen Lake. We arrived at our destination at 2:40 pm just a little over 2 hours after leaving Larry’s Camp. It was another fast section on the hike with an average pace close to 5 kph.
The rain came shortly after we had set up but lucky for us it did not stay long but the weather remained threatening most of the evening. There was one camper already set up. We never got his name but Micah nicknamed him Fisherguy. The coolest thing about Fisherguy is that he had an 11 year old Chihuahua named Reg. Reg was chillin inside Fisherguy’s coat but had apparently walked most of the way to camp. They had already been in camp a couple of days and hiked most of the way around the lake.
During the evening the four young people showed up. At first they went swimming. Many of the backcountry lakes in Banff NP are off limits for swimming due to the presence of Whirling Disease. Whirling Disease is not harmful for humans but can devastate fish populations. In bodies of water where Whirling Disease has been detected you are to avoid getting in the water, except to wade across or wash, to prevent accidentally spreading the disease from one body of water to the next. Whirling Disease has not been detected in Luellen Lake so swimming was permitted. What was not permitted was what the group did after. They set up to fish and announced their plan was to have fish for dinner. FisherGuy immediately spoke up and said the rules in Banff NP were catch and release only. One of the young people insisted that they had talked to someone from Parks Canada and it was ok to catch and cook. FisherGuy protested but the group held firm. The four of us where of no use in the debate as we had no idea of the rules but we believed FisherGuy. After the hike I checked up the regulations and they are not worded very clear. The bottom line is that except in Lake Minnewanka, it is catch and release only in Banff NP. So FisherGuy was correct.
I am not completely sure if the young people ended up actually fishing. It was a little tense at the campsite so I went off and took photos. The young people were staying at Johnston Creek CG and when I got back to eating area they were gone.
The weather held off for dinner. I take a mix of homemade dried meals and meals purchased from Peak Eats on all my trips. Peak Eats is a local company makes dried meals and then delivers to your door. I believe in supporting local business and have been happy with my meals. The standard meals are a little on the small size but they give an option to Supersize them which I always do.
After dinner while we where still hanging out in the eating area Bob showed up at camp. Bob was super kewl in a understated kewl kind of way. Bob is a principal for an online school in southern Alberta. His teaching specialty was humanities but he got very excited when he found out that both Jordan and Micah were doing their Phd’s in Physics. He said that while he was a humanities teacher his secret love is Physics. Bob was doing the same hike as we were, starting and finishing at Mt Norquay, but for Bob this was his own personal Sawback 2.0. He had come to hike the Sawback last year but turned around and went home. This year he was determined to complete the hike. Bob fired off lots of questions to Jordan and Micah through the evening until it was time for bed. We did not really see a lot of Bob on the trail as he was a sleep in hike late type of hiker. We shared the same campsite tomorrow but Bob did not arrive until after I had gone to bed. Then Bob would leap frog us skipping our next camp at Flint’s Park and going straight to Sawback Lake CG.
Just as we dove into the tent it started to rain lightly. I find the pitter patter of rain on the tent to be a very relaxing way to fall asleep.