Diana Lake - October 2, 2021

 We didn't get to the trailhead until 12 noon. The hike is 14.5 kilometres in and out with a 780 metre rise. And that didn't include our walk beyond the lake. Bottom line, gruelling day. The trail was good though so it was a brisk walk down. 

The larches are spectacular in the fall. Even on a dreary, cloudy day, they seemed to glow. That was like the day of our hike. Cloudy and cool and cooler with every few hundred metres rise. A memorial bench overlooks the lake. That's where we stopped for a drink of water and a granola bar. Almost immediately, we left the cold so our first order of business was to pull our down sweaters from the backpack. 

The vertical walls of Mount Norman border the far side of the lake. Its scree slope falls into the lake allowing only a few larches to cling to its lower slope. Larches are common in the marshes surrounding our old home in Slave Lake but here in the Columbia Valley, they're only found in the upper elevations. 

A family of three, mom and dad and their 20 something daughter arrive with their Bernese mountain dog. Mom walks over to our bench, takes off her pack and proceeds to pull out a jacket. Only after she's donned her coat does she say hello. Nicola figures she was cold. Like the other four couples we'd passed on the way up, they were all on the way down. (We really need to get going a little earlier in the day.)

Diana Lake has the Diana Lodge and Teahouse that we learned at the trail head was closed. During the summer, they serve warm soup and nachos for snacks which would have tasted fantastic at this time of the day. The lodge also takes lodgers, up to eight Nicola tells me. $100 a night per person for a bed in a dorm. For one to four people, it's $350 a night for the whole lodge. Another $50 per person for food.

We passed a group of four putting in pylons for some future structure. The pylons must have been about a foot in diameter so I wondered how they brought them up. After three hours of an uphill slog, Nicola thought she would like to use the biffy however as we approached a structure build above ground like those we'd first seen in a Tibet, a gruff male voice yells, "Those of private." 

"No problem," Nicola replies. Most people don't like to be yelled at and that would include us. Why not a sign, we wondered? And if not a sign, a little apology. Who knows,  one of might have been incontinent and this might have been our one chance in a very long time to relieve a certain abdominal pressure. As it was, we just thought he was an asshole which is a pretty rare phenomenon on the trails. 

Mount Judge rises at a 90 degree angle to Mount Norman. A trail climbs up its gentle sloping ridge and Nicola thought we'd get a good view of the lake from there. But, it was already close to 4:00. I figured an hour up and down the ridge and the light would be getting pretty dim by the time we got back to the car. We did discover a trail that winds down the far side of the lake that did provide us those views with larches to provide an orange glow to the greenish blue reflections of the lake. 

Nicola said the return downhill is recommended for trail running and it's easy to see why. It's part of a smooth forest floor with few roots and rocks to trip over. The light was dimming considerably in the dense forest that dominates the lower part of the hike. That's why we were quite surprised to see a couple of young women on their way up about two-thirds of the way to the bottom. I assumed they had a tent and sleeping bags or were part of the work crew at the lodge. It would be quite dark by the time they got there.

Three hours up, less than two down. Quick but hard on the knees.