Rockwall: Floe Lake to Numa Creek

Day two awoke to snow and cool mountain air. It wasn't so cold out that we were shivering, but it was uncomfortable to take down the tent and pack the gear without gloves on. My fingers got cold pretty quickly. However, after eating a breakfast, we packed up and headed out.We took some pictures by the wintery lake before hitting the trail.This is Garrett and me doing the "Kimway" dance. You sort of had to be there, but all the cool kids were doing it.Who's that cute guy?The lake was ominous but beautiful still.
Bonnie and Sean!I was sightly obsessed with taking pictures of flowers covered in snow. It seemed the flowers were confused about the snow so early in the season, too!We started up the trail, climbing the 300 meters up towards Numa Pass. At first there was just a light dusting of snow.Once we got moving, we were immediately warm, although we had to keep our raincoats and hoods on because it was snowing constantly.It was too bad that it was so cloudy, since we couldn't truly enjoy the view of the mountains around us through the haze.We were heading towards the pass to the right of the right-most mountain in the below picture:We looked back towards Floe Lake, which could be seen faintly through the snow.As we neared the top, the snow on the ground increased, as did the snow falling from the sky.We saw some more flowers covered in snow!Nearing the summit of the pass, we passed above the tree line, walking through the shrub lined lined path.Finally, upon gaining even more elevation, we entered what I like to call the "moonscape", which is devoid of trees, shrubs and other lifeforms. It's simply rocks and dirt.
We didn't linger too long up there, since it was windy, snowy and cold. Instead, we started hiking down the other side, back into the trees.
As we hiked farther down the far side of the pass, we became grateful that we had made the circuit in the direction we had. On our way down, we hiked wayyyyy down a very very steep trail, which would have been terribly grueling to climb instead of descend.
Look how steep the trail was at some points!This waterfall followed us the whole way down the slope.Once reaching the bottom of our steep descent, we came into a valley with some more waterfalls feeding into it.We continued hiking towards the next campground, Numa Creek, passing this tree along the way. I liked it - it has messy hair!We reached Numa Creek campground over this bridge:
Once at the campground, we quickly realized everything was wet and that we would be sitting in the rain for a long time until bed time.So, after a brief break, we decided to hike all the way to the car, rather than spend the second night in the mountains.
Our hike out was quick and uneventful, so I didn't take any pictures until we reached the end of our hike at Numa Falls.After our hike, we hit up the Radium hot springs to warm up and change into clean clothes! We drove back to Calgary that night.