CR2014: Opabin Plateau and Yukness Ledges

Early on July 22nd Joan and I scooted up to the parking area and bus stop for Lake O'Hara. The old, weatherbeaten shelter had been replaced by a shiny new one.

Here's a closeup of the bulletin board, with bilingual notices, warnings, weather reports, etc.

Hey look! Ben Gadd, author of the best-selling Handbook of the Canadian Rockies, will be speaking tomorrow night!

Joan and I boarded the lodge bus, and happily left civilization 11 kilometers behind. This photo is taken from the near the mouth of Lake O'Hara, into the sun.

We decided to head first to the Opabin Plateau, our favorite spot for late starts and rainy days, a great place to wander with no adamant goal. We prefer to head up the West Opabin Trail,

and in this photo, we've come over the lip of the plateau and are looking back the way we've come.

Just a few minutes later we came across a family of hoary marmots. A parent, likely exhausted, was lazily keeping an eye on things.

There were three baby marmots to look after. Here's one, nibbling on the greenery.

And two more, emerging after chasing each other through the tunnels and overhangs of the rocks.

One took a perch.

We tore ourselves away from the marmot playground, and five minutes later, spotted a pika running from rock to foliage and back. It can be difficult to spot this cute little critter in the greenery.

Pikas harvest foliage and create haystacks in their rocky dens to carry them through the winter.

Another five minutes on we encountered another marmot, who checked us out.

Soon we were approaching the final moraine before reaching Opabin Lake. Hungabee Lake is in the foreground.

Here is the layout from Google Maps.

Looking back down the plateau from this point, much is obscured by the gentle downslope.

It was barely past noon, so Joan and I decided to traverse the Yukness Ledges and return to the lodge by the Lake Oesa trail. As we approached the midpoint of the ledges, and came around a corner, we encountered a mountain goat heading towards us. He's still shedding his winter coat (click on the photo to enlarge), and looks raggedy.

We halted, but the goat, embarrassed by his disheveled appearance, decided to abandon the trail.

Of course I had to take the obligatory mid-point photo back to Lake O'Hara. Some of our trail is visible at far right.

Others were traversing the Yukness Ledges, some clockwise, some counterclockwise.

From here my photo-taking ceased for the day.

When taking the Victoria Lake cutoff,

we met Jim and Gabby, two guys we met for the first time a couple of years ago at Lake O'Hara. The regulars do bump into each other from time to time!

Also, as we started down on the Lake Oesa Trail, we encountered a young man coming up who was desperate for AA batteries for his almost exhausted camera. We had none -- our cameras all took proprietary batteries.

It was a gorgeous, creature-filled day. Who knows what might happen tomorrow?