Travel Letters: Canadian Rockies, Hiking + Painting

{top center} 6 but things didn't turn out first as we had planned. Victor didn't have any [?] this summer and we wanted to try [?] [?] as a giude and also help him a bit and it makes it inexpensive for us. We knew he had been to Shadow Lake before and were quite surprised to find the man he had with them didn't cover that part of the country. However he had made inquires about the trail over and we knew it was a blased trail. However he heard one went to the end of Shadow Lake and then up and thikning he knew where he was going we naturally never questioned him. We did go in the right direction to reach [?] Lakes as the crow flies but not a mile from the cabin and it is a lovely spot. We think we will go in there in the fall sometime and paint the country is lovely and the [?] [?] low? the mountains seem tremendous. They are pretty high and have glaciers too. We saw

{top center} 7 a most unusual thing a water spout on the lake. The water was whirled up in the air the way dust is often whirled into a column by wind. We also saw a birds nest full of eggs in the grass. On the map you can see pretty well where we went we followed up the creek at the foot of Mt Ball. [?] trail we were following just disappeared as trails do some times but thinking we were going the right way we kept on. It was hard going over boulders and fallen trees and then we came to a meadow and we started walking up the hill to the right. It was the toughest sort of heavy timber to go [?] but we finally reach the top with lots of [?] rests as the mosquitoes were too thick to rest [?] at a time. We reached a lovely Alpine meadow at the top and then we could see what looked like a pass above us. We had a quick dinner of bully beef and bread and bread and after a 15 minute stop went on again. up and up

{top center} 8 The meadow was pretty high but it looked as if we must go higher Pete was sure Storm [?] was on our right but Victor thought it was on the left so up we went over [?] [?] to patch of snow. It wasn't easy that we took it in short hauls. From the meadow the pass didn't seem to look so high. but as we got up we could see there was a wall of rock and it was sort of a blind draw. We [?] the area of having doubled about the level of 9000 feet for nothing and so at Pete suggestion we decided to circle what he thgouht goes Storm [?] knowing [?] Lakes was at the foot of Storm. It wasn't as easy [?] as it looked for it was all [?] rock we had to scramble over we got around the cover in about an hour and of course there was still another cover so we kept on going and always there seemed to be another cover where we would be able to tell where the pass was where the trail went.

{Heading the page of an image. Sepia color image of two log cabins, one smaller than the other in front of tall tree and the top of a large mountain rigde in the background} {Stamp in center and bottom of top image. CANADIAN PACIFIC CHALET_BUNGALOW CAMPS WORLD'S GREATEST TRAVEL SYSTEM} {left side TELEGRAMS BANFF, ALBERTA} {right side RIDING HIKING FISHING} Castle Mountain Chalet - Bungalow Camp RAILWAY STATION AND PORT OFFICE CASTLE MOUNTAIN, ALTA.

I must say I was getting pretty tired and none of us expected to make Castle Camp and maybe not even [?] Lakes. We were by this time just above the the cabin we had spent the night in but a long way above and we didn't want to go back. Just then we saw a [?] in the distance and that sort of gave us lots of courage so we kept on round one more cover. Then we saw some pink snow, really pink but it was below us and we didn't want to loost the altitude Then we came to an Apline meadow

{top center} 10 and then were 23 goats drinking at a little pond. They [?] if when they heard us but it was a large flock to see. We were awfully thirsty having? one quite a way without having? one so we stopped in the lovely alpine meadow and had some chocolate as well. It seemed to be the right pass this time so we went to the [?] of the meadows and sure enough we found lots of blazes and the trail going down into the valley below it was 5.30 by then and we started downing thinking we would camp at [?] Lakes. The trail was such a food one and we seened to feel fine going down hill and knowing we were on the trail made us feel awfully good. It was about 7 {struckout "when"} when we reached the lower [?] lake. We mixed cold Vitome? which was surprisingly good and some chocolate and decided we would keep on to Castle as it wasn't more than 5 or 6 miles. So on we went there was quite a hill to climb and