Maligne Lake, Medicine Lake & Maligne Canyon

Half way up Bald Hill, Colin Range in background
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After a quite noisey night in the co-ed dorm, Andy was first up just before 8am and jumped in the shower while Meg slept. Meg had a really bad nights sleep as someone was snooring for most of it. After breakfast and making lunch we left around 9.30am and drove into town to get info on hiking trails in the park in the tourist office. Having got the info we decided we'd do the Bald Hills hike above Maligne Lake which was 48km away. We drove to the lake and started the hike at 11am. The area, including the trail which is an old fire road, had quite a thick layer of snow but the sky was clear and it was quite hot in the sun. We followed the trail as it wound up the side of the mountain which at times was quite steep due to the 500m elevation gain. We got to the lookout point (site of the old fire look out) 5.2km from the start in 1hr 10mins. The views up there were really great of the 22km long Maligne Lake. We stayed here for 20mins but after a chat with a German couple we decided to hike on further to the summit of Bald Hills. The 1.5km trail to the summit was unforgettable, we were often trudging knee deep in snow to get to the foot of the summit and then after walking up the side we reached the summit in 30mins. As we reached the summit we heard a guided party of 12 fully equipped hikers that we saw earlier climbing the summit, say how mad Andy was as he was only dressed in shorts and t shirt. It was amazing at the top, not only the astounding views, but also the feeling of getting there. It really felt like we were on top of the world as we looked down on the beautiful Maligne Lake and the surrounding mountain ranges, some of which were only 400m higher than we were at 2,300m. We spent 30mins on the summit soaking in the views and then followed the footprints through the snow of the hiking party to Avalanche Canyon where Andy posed for some creative pics! We then followed the footprints back to the viewpoint about 2.5km away and then began the descent which took us 50mins during which we overtook the everso professional hiking party (nice one!) We got to the bottom at 3.10pm after a 14.4km hike and went and looked at the lake from ground level before driving to Medicine Lake. Here we got out for a look and read about the "dissapearing" act the lake does through autum and winter. After we continued back towards Jasper and stopped at Maligne Canyon where we walked around for 30mins looking at the very deep winding canyon. From here we drove back into Jasper and had a look around the shops before going back to the hostel to cook dinner. Later we extended our stay by 2 extra nights and Andy got upset when he read that Man Utd lost 1-0 to Arsenal! Both agreed Bald Hills hike to the summit was the best one we have done so far - loved it!