Castleguard Meadows (Day 2)
It rained the entire night. Non-stop. Or at least it was raining every time I woke up. We stayed bone-dry. There was a little bit of condensation on the tent fly but our trusty UCO Tent Lantern helped in that matter. We already established our morning routine just before going to bed. It started with a 6:30AM alarm, and luckily for us, the rain stopped as soon as we opened the vestibule door. We started the fire back up just to warm us up. We agreed on a fast breakfast to get an early start. Our plan was to leave before 8:00AM and we ended up leaving at 8:15AM under a light gray sky that seemed to be clearing up.
It became quite obvious that if anyone used this trail in the past, the old Warden's cabin was their final destination as it was also the end of the old fire road. Leaving the cabin, the trail became extremely overgrown with bushes and willows. If we had concerns about bears on the first day, our concerns grew exponentially on the next one because the path was only a few inches wide with thick forest all around and it would've made any bear encounter problematic with nowhere to go out of his way. But to be honest, we had other stuff to worry about... The bushes, 5-feet tall at the most, were soaked with water and even with the best Gore-Tex hardshell pants and jacket, we were wet from head to toes.
When we left our campsite this morning we also left behind the Alexandra River to begin following the Castleguard River and eventually walked right next to it. This gorgeous spot on the river flats combined with the mid-day sun made for a perfect place to dry our clothes and some of our gear. The glacial water felt good on our sore feet and putting back dry clothes after was amazing! I could've stayed there all day looking at the mountains and soaking what looked like the last warm(ish) day of the summer in the Rockies. But after a delicious hot lunch, we packed up and continued on for what would be the real challenge, finding the Castleguard Meadows.
We followed the Castleguard River for a while, sometimes right next to it, sometimes high above it. We started gaining elevation and it was a good sign. But the trail started to look sketchy, splitting up every now and then, almost like we were following game trails. A very steep and fast flowing creek that almost looked like a waterfall had to be crossed and it made for a nerve-racking moment because the only option was to sit on an unstable fallen tree and use a lower one to push yourself with your feet. The problem was that only myself was tall enough to reach both trunks… Not fun. I was anxiously watching my GPS once in a while, knowing we were slowly approaching the point where Marty got lost. It was when the trail veered up towards the meadows, gaining more than a 1000ft of elevation in about a kilometer or so. We stopped where the GPS route stopped. It was 5:00PM. We had been hiking for seven hours already. I looked at Andrea and told her if we wanted to push to the meadows, there was no turning-back at this point. We were only about 2km away from the designated camping area. 1km of ascent, and 1km of flat walking across the meadow.
What followed was the most brutal bushwhacking we’ve ever done. There was no trail. Well, there was, but we lost it too. How can a trail, even overgrown could just disappear? Yes the 5-feet high bushes and hundreds of waist-high deadfall made route-finding challenging since the beginning but there was always an obvious path of travel. I only took one picture of this ordeal that lasted two hours. Two hours of walking through a forest where most of the time, we had to squeeze ourselves between the trees to advance. We made a staggering 500 meters of “progress” during that time. I started thinking about a Plan B for the night. There was not a single leveled/flat spot for us to pitch a tent. Our last resort would have been to hang our double ultralight hammock and turn around the next morning.
But suddenly, as I went around the 254th fallen dead tree, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stepped on what looked like a well-worn trail. OH MY GOD HONEY, THAT’S THE TRAIL!!! Out of nowhere. We both waited for a while before heaving a sigh of relief. But when we saw a few cut down trees clearly made by a chainsaw, our energy level and morale were instantly back up. We eventually reached the treeline and I remember screaming of joy when the trees became scattered, meaning we successfully made it to the Castleguard Meadows.
It was now 8:45PM. We had left the warden’s cabin more than 12 hours ago. We were beaten up. With 30 minutes of daylight left, we had to spare every one of them. We quickly filtered water at the first source we stumbled upon for our diner. The designated campground was nowhere to be found. Actually, there was no campground. This entire trail being decommissioned and not maintained anymore, our bivouac permit allowed us to camp within 100m of a post with the backcountry campground logo. All we could managed to find was the outhouse, which looked like it had been built a few months earlier, proving once more that nobody comes here.
There was an area near the outhouse with an old fire-ring we could’ve pitch the tent on, but walked 20 steps further and rewarded ourselves with the most stunning view we ever had from our tent. A little creek, a vast open meadow, snowy peaks, glaciers… PERFECTION!
The Castleguard Meadows at sunset.
But the exhaustion prevented us from really enjoying it that night. We had a quick diner while watching the sky turn purple and pink and went straight to bed, hopping for a sunny Day 3.