Mount Robson 2

We awoke to sunshine and mist, rendering the valley a puzzle of mountain pieces seen through the fog. Garrett took this beautiful photo from the campsite:And another photo, looking down the valley in the other direction.We packed up camp and filtered ourselves some water from the river, before heading out and up on our 10km hike.This is looking on top of the mountain and a neat little glacier hanging over the edge.Next, we started hiking up and up and up. We had about 500m elevation to gain over a 4km distance. STEEP! We endured lots of switchbacks and hard work as we hauled ourselves and our heavy packs up the mountainside. We rested when we needed to (which was often) and took in some viewpoints along the way. Following is a brief description of each picture.
Valley of a Thousand Waterfalls, before we started climbing out:Robson river waterfall (unknown name) at the base of our climb:Bonnie and Garrett on the bridge at the base of our climb:Kim and Bonnie climbing up the hillside near one of the switchback corners:Kim and Bonnie, getting friendly, at Whitefalls, one of the viewpoints on the way up:View of the mountains and a waterfall on our climb:Resting on the way up:Fall of the pools viewpoint, on the climb up:Emperor Falls, up ahead. This was our goal in order to finish the climb upwards. Once we reached the top of these falls, the hike was mostly flat the rest of the way. Although it's hard to tell in the picture, these falls were very impressive. We took better pictures on our hike out, which I'll show when I summarize Day 4.We rested and ate lunch at Emperor Falls, then continued on our way. At this point, the landscape started to change drastically. We hiked along a region of the mountain with shale galore, which was very exposed, windy, rainy and cold.We started seeing the glaciers ahead:Looking back down from where we had come:We got closer and closer to the glacier as we crossed over rocky river beds and bridges:The last 3km's of the hike were fairly uneventful and we reached the Berg Lake campsite around 4pm. We set up camp and relaxed in the chalet. The great thing about this campsite was the totally enclosed shelter in which to cook and relax in the evenings. It even had a fireplace for some warmth. We did, however, pop outside to take some pictures when the sun finally came out and to take a walk in the evening - it can get boring (and dark) being inside the chalet all evening.
Garrett took this picture so it looked like Bonnie and I were climbing on the glacier. I love it!Someone built an Inukshuk at the beach by the chalet:Indian paintbrush flower:Berg lake is so named because the glaciers often release small icebergs, which then float around the lake. In fact, while we were there, we heard the glaciers cracking a number of times, although we saw no mini bergs formed except for this one, which may or may not be a glacier (it was really far away, and this was Garrett's camera's max zoom)Zoomed in to the surface of the glacier:We secured all of our food items in the storage lockers provided (bear proof) and prepared for bed. We were pretty tired from our grueling climb up the mountain, and sleep came easily.