Twin Falls

We decided to deviate slightly from our plan and spend a whole day at the Twin Falls campsite. It was beautiful and it was a good to remind ourselves that even though we want to get to Alaska so that we can see as much as possible before the weather starts to turn and we need to head back south, we should still enjoy BC a bit on the way up too. 

There was one major trail out of the camp site called the Glacier Gulch trail. There were lots of signs at the bottom about it being steep and difficult and there being an avalanche hazard. Luckily there was no snow to avalanche at this time of year, but boy were they serious about the steep and difficult part. 

The hike started out with some steep switchbacks through the forest. There were places were the trail was washed out, and despite signs about the fact that the trail wasn’t maintained there were ropes drilled into the side of the wall to help you cross. 

Fairly quickly the forest gave way to a rock field which is where the hiking got really hard. It was hard to get footing and at times it was difficult to locate the trail markers to identify where to go next. We thought Aiden would have a hard time with that but she was a champ. We got very close to the stop of the rock field but decided it was time to turn around. One factor was that it was looking a lot like it might start to rain. We are true Pacific Northwesterners (even if Andreas wasn’t born there) and hiking in the rain isn’t normally a problem. However the rock field was treacherous enough when it was dry and we were worried that things might start sliding more. That and there was absolutely no cover on the rock field in case it turned into a real storm. We also had no idea how close we were to the actual glacier we were trying to go see. However turning around wasn’t the end of the world, even the view from the rock field was absolutely amazing. We were also woefully underprepared for this hike, between the elevation and the fact that we haven’t been doing a lot of hiking this summer we were pretty winded. And boy are our legs feeling that hike today. 

 

After heading back down to camp we went to get some water from the stream and tested out our new water filter. Our fresh water tank has been out of commission so we only have two big jugs of fresh drinkable water on us at any time. They can last us about 48 hours when used sparingly but we always need to thinking about how much water we have. Luckily we are working to clean out the fresh water tank as I type this. But yesterday we filled two big buckets of water in the river and carried them back to the camper. We filtered enough water fill our drinking water and then heated up one kettle worth on the stove for a bucket bath. (Turns out bucket baths are more pleasant in Guinea than in Canada. Who knew.) Then the rest of the water was used to do our first load of hand washing. It was a small batch of laundry but since we had the water we figured it was probably a good idea. 

Kathleen forgot to factor in the fact that Canada is not as hot and dry as Guinea again when doing laundry and it had a hard time drying. Next time we do laundry we will need to start earlier in the day and make sure we have a sunny camp site. We make our first camp fire of the trip though and cooked dinner on it as well as moving the drying rack closer to make use of the heat. All of our clothes smell very strongly of camp fire but there are worse things. At the end of the night we came up with a great new method of clothes drying. We put our baking sheet on the fire and put clothes on for a little bit to heat them up and get them steaming. We didn’t use that method to finish any of them off, but we did get them significantly drier. Today we are driving with the laundry rack bungeed into the bathroom area… so maybe next time we’ll make sure we’re at a site we’ll stay for a little bit. 

Yesterday was also our first “Deutscher Donnerstag” in which we set out to only speak German for the day. We knew the first on was going to be rough because Kathleen’s German is still pretty bad. We didn’t stick to it all day because it was hard to when things really needed to be said, but we got a few hours in and it was a good start.  

At the moment we’re at the visitor center in New Hazelton where they have a free dump site. We bought a water flush in Bellingham before heading north so we’re running that through the tank to hopefully make the water drinkable again. We also ordered a water “refresher” off Amazon before leaving. Over time that additive got the water from “I don’t want to run that in the RV because the smell is so bad” to “Yeah, I’ll use it for dishes.” We have high hopes that this stronger one will do the trick and we’ll be able to actually drink the water that comes out of the sink. 

Our water flow is very, very slow so we’re working on the flush while also sitting at a picnic table working on the blog and letting some of the wetter clothes dry. We also keep letting people go in front of us because we feel bad about how long this cycling process takes us. We may not be making a lot of progress north again today but we’re doing things that need to be done and the whole point of this trip is to not be in a rush.