Day three, leaving the mountains

Marmots!! So cute! I took about 20 pictures of this little guy as he got closer and closer to me. The first picture is where he and his buddy started out and the second one is how close he ended up.Our hike out of the mountains started with some instant pancake mix from MEC. Seems like a good idea? Well, Garrett really liked them once he got the hang on not burning the little suckers, but I didn't find them that appealing. In any case, we ate some grub and loaded up to head out to freedom! Freedom, that is, from our packs, boots and sore parts.

The trail was 11km to hike out and 300m elevation drop. Sounded great! We started off around 10:30 with high spirits, and since we were descending and not panting the whole time, we sang songs to pass the time. It really helped to distract from the sore feet and knees. Unfortunately, it's hard to sing whole songs without the music and there aren't really that many songs we knew all the words to. I'm sad to admit that some of the ones we knew best were country: 'Save a horse, Ride a Cowboy' by Big and Rich, 'Beer for my Horses' by Toby Keith and Willy Nelson and 'Truck got Stuck' by Corb Lund Band. Very embarrassing for a girl who has been spurning the country influence of Alberta for the last two years. Anyway, we also sang some Bon Jovi and Green Day, so I like to think that made up for it. Luckily, there were no other people on the trail to hear us massacre all that we sang - while Garrett can carry a tune, my abilities are strongly lacking.

One of the sights out that day was a large waterfall churning to the ground. While not as high as Helmet Falls, it was impressive none the least.The trail out of Tumbling Creek was in really poor shape for the most part, because it isn't used very often and a lot of debris comes down the mountain to mess up the trail. Meadow trails were overgrown, and some cliffside trails were washed away altogether. We came across the remains of several avalanches from winter, complete with snow still. Two such avalanches completely obliterated our trail and we had to travel around them. We walked on the bottom side of them near the river, which had cut away the snow in a very straight line. See below: We wisely didn't try to climb over the snow packs, as this was the cave melting away on the inside:
If anyone can explain to me why it melts this way, I'd be interested in knowing. In any case, it was pretty cool to see, but fairly annoying to scramble over the debris and back to the trail.

This picture below is some more snow pack from an avalanche that has been worn away by the river so that it's just held up by one little part on the right. You can see right under it.We followed Tumbling Creek for the whole trip out and saw some nice rapids along the way:And then...dunh dunh dunh...
We reached the washed out bridge. We had been told ahead of time that it was washed out, so we were prepared to cross it when the time came. This is where we crossed the river:Others had crossed here and marked it off, so we knew where to go. We took off our boots and put on our sandals, rolled up our pants and held walking sticks in both hands. Then we plunged in. ICE COLD!!!! The current was pretty strong so we had to really hang on to keep our footing, and the deepest it went up to was just below the knee. As we crossed the worst of the current and reached shallower waters on the other side, the pain of the freezing water started hitting us and we rushed out as quickly as we could. Then we hopped around and moaned and complained about how cold our feet were! Ack! But we made it! We put our boots back on and headed on down the mountain.

We crossed over Tumbler Creek:And shortly after that found a sign that said it was only 3.9km to the highway. This is my excited/slightly dazed face:Finally, oh finally, we made it to the car, where we quickly took an 'After' picture before getting in the car to avoid the impending thunderstorm. Yes, we are actually having trouble standing up.We drove down to Radium and hit the hotsprings to soak our pains away. Glorious and much needed as we were hobbling before that. We camped in Radium before driving back the next morning.