Busy and Wonderful Final Days in Jasper! :)

On the last full day before moving on to a new area is a day of errands, maintenance, repairs (if required), laundry...all the fun stuff! However, we did manage to have an incredible final outing the day before leaving. Although the weather started off rainy, I really wanted to get our bikes on a trail. There are lots of awesome winding trails within the trees all around Whispers Campground in Jasper, so we left from our site and found a trail running parallel to the Athabasca River. Some of the shorts trails were groomed and some not groomed. They weren't difficult at all, but lots of fun. During our ride we came out at a central hiking location where you have some options from the trailhead. You can hike to the Maligne River, the Valley of Five Lakes (we need to come back to hike Valley of Five Lakes!), and the Old Fort Point Trail. It looked pretty cool up on the ridge overlooking the River, so we decided to ride back to change from biking gear into hiking gear and check out the Old Fort Point Trail.

Old Fort Point Trail Loop turned out to be our favourite hike thus far!! AllTrails recommends hiking this trail clockwise; however, we did not read AllTrails before heading out! I'm glad we didn't actually.

We started off at the base of a cliff walking up wooden stairs ... a lot of them!! The viewpoint at the top of the stairs and along the ridge was just spectacular! All viewpoints in Jasper are spectacular it seems! Then you start up the rock stairs, which is steeper than the wooden stairs. Once you reach the next viewpoint we were amazed by the panoramic views of the valley where you could see Jasper Park Lodge, Lac Beauvert and the Athabasca River.

Then we continue behind the Old Fort lookout and very narrow trails and then turned left to find more "red chairs" on top of a flat hill with more amazing 360 degree views! If you recall from a previous post, Parks Canada has placed over 200 red Adirondack chairs in peaceful and scenic places throughout Canada's national parks, two of which are on the old Fort Point Loop Trail! There must be a map or guide of where all the chairs are located. That would be a fun goal...hike to all the red chairs throughout Canada!! We've hiked to 4 (2 sets) so far!!

Anyway, coming back down through the dense trees with lots of up and down was incredible! We came across an area where obviously part of the mountain we were standing on let go many, many, many years ago and I swear it was a like someone very thoughtfully placed each boulder where it rested close enough to the trail to catch the eye of hikers passing by!

The only disappointment we have about Old Fort Lookout trail is that it's only about 4 km long!

Overall, we have made a lot great memories in Jasper and made some new friends. We will definitely be back to experience even more. Tomorrow we get ready to move to Mount Robson (June 8) for a week. It's only about an hour away...we are putting on HUGE miles!! That's okay, we have time!

We have no services at Mount Robson, so wish us luck!!

Don't forget to check out the pics of our final days in Jasper!