Crypt Lake

After 9 years, I finally got to hike to Crypt Lake in Waterton National Park again.  30 years ago it was rated the best hike in Canada (and they are still bragging about it!  LOL).  If you are looking for a hike with variety, this is the hike to do.

You start off on a 15 minute boat ride across Upper Waterton Lake to get to the trail head.  If you'd rather, you can hike about 15 km in, but by the time you do that you probably don't want to hike up to the lake any more.  The trail starts in the woods and gradually changes to scree.

There is a tunnel you need to crawl through (See that dark spot just to the right of Marlin and Steve above?  That's the tunnel entrance.) and then a section that you need to hold onto a cable or risk falling off the side of the mountain.  It isn't quite as bad as it sounds, but if you stumbled in that section, it would be a very, very scary moment.

And then of course you get to a beautiful lake.

Despite hauling my camera, and big ass (aka heavy) lens, I barely took any photos (the one above was taken with my iPhone as I was too lazy to remove my backpack, get out my camera, change lenses, take a photo, change lenses back, put the camera away and put my backpack back on). But I am always worried I'll see something amazing and kick myself for not having my camera!

We saw a few beautiful waterfalls and 4 mountain goats (I maybe see one every year or two if I'm lucky)!

But they were very far away - the picture below was taking at 200 mm (my farthest zoom) and the one above was cropped on the computer afterwards - just to give you an idea as to how far away they were.

We had a fun time and managed to hike the 18 km and catch the 4:00 boat back.  It was long and a little exhausting (although I did get a second wind as we were running to catch the boat - we made it with less than 10 minutes to spare).  The ice cream I had in town after made all the pain disappear.