This page exists as an alternative to the multi-section, forty-page main trip report. If forty pages of reading seems eye-poppingly long to you, there's an alternative here: On this page, you'll find a succinct set of thirty or so images along with a bit of text to give you an overview and a few highlights.
Note: If you've come here and are looking to read the main trip report, this isn't it! Please go
here instead.
On this trip, we visited four Parks along the crest of the Rocky Mountains: Waterton Lakes National Park, Peter Lougheed Provincial Park in the Kananaskis Region, and Banff National Park, all in Canada, and Glacier National Park, in the state of Montana. All of the outings we did were either touching, crossing, following, or quite near the Continental Divide. Hence the name of this report: Astride the Divide.
We first visited Waterton Lakes National Park, tucked far into the southwestern corner of Alberta. After meeting up with Cassándra, a friend of ours, we spent two very rewarding days hiking (and scrambling) along two of the park's most notable routes: the Carthew-Alderson traverse, and a circuit over Akamina Ridge.
We made slight enhancements to each of these Waterton Lakes NP outings: on the Carthew-Alderson traverse, we added on a side ascent of Mt Carthew, and with the Akamina Ridge circuit, we ascended via an alternative route that involved scrambling up and over Forum Peak. One final note: most of the Akamina Ridge circuit is actually within British Columbia.
From Waterton Lakes, we drove south into the United States, into adjacent Glacier National Park, Montana. Here we met up with a work colleague and his family, and together, we hiked along a section of one of the park's signature backcountry attractions - the Highline Trail. The Highline Trail is a high-level traverse beneath a long stretch of the Continental Divide, and provides many hours of scenic, above treeline travel.
Also notable on this hike was the fact that Chris' wife, Gillian, carried their new five-month old daughter Evie with us (for the entire 19km distance!). Super good job!
After the Highline Trail hike, it was back to just Jenn and myself for a few days. We opted for a shorter but extremely scenic hike on the east side of the divide in Glacier: the hike to Iceberg Lake.
Iceberg Lake is an especially sheltered alpine tarn nestled under the sheer cliffs of the Continental Divide. An especially large amount of snow and ice accumulates in this shady bowl, and even late in the summer, the water of the lake is filled with floating chunks of snow and ice.
