Curious Pika
Our last day was very nice. It was a bit cloudy as we packed up and then ate breakfast, but is began to clear. We hiked to Linda Lake. The trail leaves directly from the campsite, and it seems quite flat, though actually it is dropping gradually. At one point we wondered if we were on the correct trail, as we hadn’t seen a trail sign for quite a while. Consulting the GPS and the map convinced us we were heading in the right direction, and in fact we came across a trail junction sign almost immediately.
We ate our lunch on the rocks at the far end of Linda Lake. We were joined by a curious pika. I’m sure it was attracted by the odor of our peanut butter, honey, jam and crackers. It approached us quite closely, then would dart away.
Finally it overcame its fear and came at us from behind. We took a lot of pictures of it. Enid had taken off her sunglasses to better see her camera and set them on the rocks. Suddenly the pika darted in, grabbed the sunglasses, and began to drag them away. Fortunately it dropped them onto a large rock, as it could just as easily have dropped them down into the cracks between the boulders where we could never have recovered them. Just a bit later it was licking at our hiking poles, so we assumed it was after salt.
We hiked back on the Morning Glory Lakes trail. This trail was a lot rougher than the one we walked this morning from the campsite. It was now very hot and muggy, and as we passed the Morning Glory Lakes (where someone was fly fishing) I commented to Enid that I thought it was going to rain.
Sure enough it did just as we reached the Alpine Club hut in the meadow. We had originally planned to leave on the 4:30 bus, but we thought we might just barely make it on the 2:30 bus. Since it was just sprinkling, we didn’t want to get wet, and we didn’t want to miss the bus, we hustled! I could hardly keep up to Enid, she was walking so fast! We made it to the campground just in time, got our packs out of the shelter, and it opened up and poured. Fortunately we were able to stand under the sheltering roof at the washing up area, put on our raincoats, and didn’t get very wet at all. The bus arrived just a couple of minutes later, and the rain slackened, though we drove through it all the rest of the way down the mountain, and most of the way back to Lake Louise.
Everything was fine at our trailer which has been sitting here in the campground while we were away. Since it had stopped raining I strung up every piece of rope we have with us between the trees, and we hung almost everything we had camping out to dry. Most of it is nicely dried up and now put away.