After a day of flying with Selkirk Tangiers, Becca and I drove to Lake Louise to meet back up with Zac and Grete to do some more exploring in the Canadian Rockies. While we were in Whitefish, we had schemed up some plans do the Yoho Traverse.

The Yoho Traverse is a variation of the more popular Wapta Traverse. Our plan was to start at Peyto Lake and spend the first night at the Peyto Hut. Next, we’d make out way to the brand new Louise and Richard Guy Hut, then finally off to the historic Stanley Mitchell Hut for the final two nights before exiting at Field.

At the toe of the glacier, Zach noticed that one of the beers was leaking. And this my friends, is why you don’t put your sharp pointy things near your beers.

The Peyto hut is perched right above the glacier.

After a night in the Peyto hut, we woke up to cloudy skies and light snow.  We set off towards the Louis and Richard Guy Hut, and spent the day navigating in white-out conditions. This really tested our orienteering skills, as we couldn’t see anything for most of the day.

Since this was a brand new hut at the time, the way to get there wasn’t totally clear. We wandered around for a bit and ended up making it to the hut right at dark after a full day of orienteering. It turns out that the directions to the hut we had weren’t the best. The next morning we woke up to more snow and set off to the Stanley Mitchell Hut for the final two nights. 

We got off the glacier and made out way to the Stanley Mitchell Hut. This hut reminded me of a lot of the 10th Mountain Division huts in Colorado. We enjoyed some sunset runs and blue skies the next day before heading back out to our shuttle vehicle.

While we didn’t have the greatest weather on the traverse, it was great spending time on glaciers to prep for Alaska with two of our good friends. Check out Zach’s blog for some of his words and photos from our trip (as well as his other amazing photos): Zachary Stephen Miller