Dog Lake and Kindersley-Sinclair Plans

After our hike to Ball Pass and stay at Kootenay Park Lodge, we drove down to Radium Hot Springs, at the southern end of Kootenay National Park. On the way we did the Dog Lake hike. Dog Lake was mostly just a leg-stretch, but we did find some colorful flowers and critters. Isn't it intriguing how the wood lilies don't form a bowl with their flowers, but sprout a see-through array?

And near the lake there were colorful flying critters (dragonflies?)

Then on to Radium Hot Springs, and the Parks Canada information center. We had been planning to hike to the Kindersley-Sinclair Col the next day, but the existing trail information stated that there was a bear warning for the trail. How serious was the warning, we wondered. There are occasional bear sightings at Lake O'Hara, but at other locations, such as Moraine Lake, there are often restrictions (hikers must be in a group with a minimum size of four or six, for example). What was the scoop on Kindersley-Sinclair? Even having looked at the map several times, we couldn't see any other truly interesting all-day trails at this end of the park. We were fretting about what to do, and hoped that a park ranger could clarify the situation.

At first the ranger was steering us elsewhere, but as we chatted -- discussing our Ball Pass hike, and Lake O'Hara -- she became more comfortable with our conditioning and experience level. The final advice was to make plenty of noise, so the bears could mosy out of the way, and to carry bear spray. Where to get bear spray? Almost any convenience store/gas station. We stopped at one on the way to our B&B/inn, and got a canister (it was behind the counter and we had to ask). We scouted out the coffee & pastry shop down the street, which opens at 6am, allowing us an early start. The shorter route (up Kindersley valley and then down Sinclair and then along the road back to Kindersley parking) is 10.1 miles, but the Sinclair valley portion is very steep, so we planned to return the way we came, making it about 12¼ miles -- with a 3500' elevation gain. Ball Pass had been a 2900' gain, so tomorrow would be our biggest day in the Rockies this year.