Nature on steroids: four days through-hiking the Berg Lake Trail

Often considered one of Canada’s most beautiful hikes, the Berg Lake Trail took us through a temperate rain forest, past waterfalls, glaciers and turquoise lakes whilst in the shadow of the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, Mount Robson.

Land acknowledgement

Robson Valley is in the traditional territories of the Simpcw First Nation, the Lheidli T’enneh Nation and the Red Bluff Indian Band.

It is late afternoon and after two days of hiking we are just about to arrive at the Berg Lake campsite.

My feet have reached that point where each step is creating an angry rub and my boots weigh me down. I feel like a small child wearing a gigantic pair of workman’s steel-toed boots.

Meanwhile, my mind is doing that thing it does after a long day hiking: fixating on stopping, imagining with great intensity what it will feel like to take off my socks and slip my feet into a cool stream.

And yet all I can do, all any of us can do, is smile.

We are walking towards one of the greatest views I have ever seen. One of the greatest views there is to see: Mount Robson, highest point in the Canadian Rockies, Berg Glacier and Berg Lake.

The Berg Lake Trail

I had first heard about this trail nine months earlier when, knowing I was going a little stir crazy in quarantine, a thoughtful friend sent me an article she had come across about it in the guardian.

Roll on five months and after knowing James and Country, who you may remember from this camping adventure, just a few weeks they popped the question to Jacob and I: “Do you want to do the Berg Lake Trail with us this summer?”

Yes, yes we did.

The adventure begins

So in early summer of 2021 the four of us piled into their car with four large backpacks and drove the three-ish hours from Prince George to Mount Robson Provincial Park to complete what some people have called Canada’s most beautiful hike.

Registration and a quick briefing at the visitors centre completed, we made a mental note of where the Park Ranger said that a Grizzly Bear and her three cubs had been spotted a few days earlier and made our way to the trail head.

We would have four days on the trail, carrying everything we needed and camping at the designated camping spots along the way. Which for us was going to be one night at Kinney Lake and two at Rearguard.

Day one

Through the forest to Kinney Lake

It is easy to overlook how enchanting the first leg of the Berg Lake trail – from the trail head to Kinney Lake – is because of the dramatic, tear inducing scenery that comes after. But the gentle incline through a temperate rain forest on a trail which winds along next to a stream and ends in the picture perfect Kinney Lake, is an exceptionally stunning hike in its own right.

For me, the shaded seven kilometers to Kinney Lake was an ideal way to remind my back how to walk with a heavy backpack on and prepare it for the more punishing second day!

While it would have been possible to walk further the first day, how could anyone miss out on stopping at Kinney Lake to camp right beside its pristine, jewelled water.

An evening at Kinney Lake

Jacob, James and Courtney also could not resist taking a quick dip in the lake. I can’t remember why I didn’t join them. Oh yeah, the water was BONE CHILLINGLY FREEZING and clearly those three have a screw loose.

We tore ourselves away from our idyllic camping spots overlooking the lake to cook dinner in the shelter – a feast of refried beans which James had been excited about for days – before following the now familiar night time preparations for camping in bear country, many of them similar to those I explain in the story of our first camping trip in Canada.

Day two

Cowboy coffee, birthday breakfast and Whitehorn’s wild flowers

On the second day, we opened the tent door to an absurd postcard view of Kinney Lake, still and silent, retrieved our food from the bear box and started making porridge by the lake. James and Courtney joined us by our tent to make coffee and be presented with their birthday badges.

As well as being the day we would be tackling the main part of the trail, hopefully arriving at Berg Lake in the early evening, today was James and Courtney’s joint birthday. With bellies full of porridge, camping equipment rammed back in backpacks and birthday badges adorned to hats, we set off for Berg Lake.

After around four kilometres of travelling deeper into the valley we crossed a swing bridge over the river and arrived at the Whitehorn campground. Another stunning spot next to the river, scattered with tiny wild flowers, a few tent pads and a view up the valley to mountains beyond.

Up we go

After leaving the open vista and beauty of Whitehorn, we were quickly facing the switchbacks which weave there way through the forest as you climb up the Valley of a Thousand Falls.

James and Jacob, being more than averagely fit blokes, were leaving me in their dust. Courtney, it turns out, is not the human female I had previously mistaken her for, but something more akin to Lightening from Gladiators. Uphill, she is far faster that me, but also beats the boys!

This meant that as the switch backs slowly became more grueling, I was grinding along far slower than the others. But I am helped by the fact that this is not my first rodeo.

I have hiked long distances with a heavy backpack before and if I learned one thing from completing the Ten Tors challenges as a teenager, it was never, ever, take your backpack off. Do not take breaks, keep that hellish lump on your back and just keep trudging away slowly.

This meant that despite being far slower than Jacob, James and Wonder Woman Courtney, sometimes – due to my regime of going slow, steady and taking no breaks – I was ahead, alone.

During one of those moments, when the others were taking longer to enjoy the Falls of the Pool waterfall, I was suddenly hit by an overwhelming smell of garbage. Instantly thinking of bears, I panicked that – despite my Darth Vader puffing and panting – one might not hear me coming.

Excuse the sensationalism, but this may have been the moment that ‘Love Shack’ by The B-52s saved my life.

I belted out that tune until all the bears in the valley ran a mile! Not long after the others caught me up, which was good, because attempting to sing while hiking uphill was exhausting!

Chasing waterfalls

Much of the uphill climb is in the forest, however, every so often you cross a bridge and the trees clear allowing you the sight of Mount Robson towering over you.

The wispy clouds passing quickly meant that Robson’s peak flirted with us all day, performing an endless peep show. Each time it popped out we would nudge each other and stare up in wonder. We were walking alongside a giant.

Another reminder that we were deep in the Rocky’s, surrounded by mountains, was the occasional rumble of thunder which would break the quiet afternoon, as a avalanche of rock tumbled down a mountain; somewhere near enough to ring loudly through the valley, but far away from where we safely walked along the trail.

Mount Robson was not the only reward; as you would expect from a place called the Valley of a Thousand Falls. The highlight and end point of that section, Emperor Falls, makes every inch of you sore back scream, ‘it was worth it’.

A gigantic waterfall, so powerful the mist soaks you from meters away, Emperor Falls stands in front of Mount Robson at the head of a mountain lined valley. Not long after we had decided to hike the Berg Lake Trail together, Country had told us that when she had seen Emperor Fall on a previous occasion, she had cried. I could see why.

Emperor Falls’ other gift – aside from potentially reducing you to tears with it’s sheer beauty – is that it marks the end of the steep section. From Emperor Falls it is just 3 kilometers, on a less steep trail, to the moment you round a corner and see the sight you have been waiting for: Berg Lake and glacier.

Arriving at Berg Lake

Robson is a satisfying mountain, the kind a child might draw if asked to. With jagged edges, false peaks and bands of snow. Berg Glacier, is spotless white and ice blue. It looks like the contents of a split bag of icing sugar that has come to rest in a precarious heap. At the bottom of the glacier, the lake is perfectly still and bright, with just a few of the small icebergs, which gave the the lake its name, gently floating along.

It is literally absurd. It is nature on steroids. But in this valley where each feature appears to be trying to out do the last, it is hardly surprising that the final end point is this breath taking.

We walked the last kilometer from the Berg Lake Campsite to Rearguard Campsite, a quieter spot with just five tent pads, where we would be spending the next two nights.

Porcupines and marshmallows

We dumped our backpacks down, started pitching the tents and discovered that some very squeaky neighbours were also enjoying the seclusion of Rearguard campsite.

Sitting near to two porcupines, watching them bickering over who gets to nibble which bit of wood and listening to their long squealed speeches to each other was a great pre-dinner show!

After some chilli, Jacob and I revealed the S’mores ingredients we’d brought as a birthday treat for James and Courtney! Gas stove toasted marshmallows leave quite a lot to be desired but washing them down with Fireball – hiker’s whiskey – and hot chocolate, helped!

Soon after we had washed our sticky S’mores-fingers the sky cleared, Mount Robson’s snowy peak was visible and it was radiant in the last light of the day. We walked to the gravel flats in front of Berg Lake where we could sit, soak our tired feet in an ice cold glacial steam, and enjoy the incredible view.

Day three

Robson Lake and Glacier

By staying two nights at Rearguard, James and Courtney’s clever suggestion, we were afforded a whole day to explore the remote, beautiful landscape around Berg Lake. Even better, as we did not need to move the tent to a new location, we had a whole day of hiking in the area without the strain of a heavy backpack.

Making use of this time, we planned two hikes for that day. The first of which was a hike towards the start of the Snowbird Pass, a trail which was closed when we were there to protect Cariboo carving grounds.

When we reached Robson Glacier, we sat and admired it, as well as some mountain goats who were grazing on the exposed ridge above the glacier.

As Jacob and James got a closer look at the glacier using James’ done, Courtney and I escaped the rain, which had began to fall, by sheltering in a rock cave where we ate Tamari Almonds and enjoyed the view!

On our way back to the campsite, where we planned to refuel before tackling the next hike, we stopped for a closer look, and listen, to Lake Robson. The beautiful, half melted ice on the lake was making gentle, wind-chime like tinkling sounds as the tiny fragments of ice clinked together.

The best view of all

Our hike that afternoon gave us an opportunity to see this incredible scenery from above. We hiked up a steep trail through the trees until we were above the tree line, looking out over Mount Robson with a glacier either side of it, two lakes at the bottom of the glaciers and a river running between them.

We had hiked high enough, to take in the full scale of Mount Robson, in its unbelievable landscape and high enough to hit snow.

We had also hiked into a new province: Alberta. For the boundary between the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta lies on this ridge in Mount Robson Park.

Storms and noodles

We spent our final evening huddled under a tarp sheltering from the rain, eating noodles and passing round the last dregs of the Fireball as a storm came in to remind us that we were in the wilderness. All we could do was count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder and enjoy our final evening far from phone service, roads and flushing toilets!

Day four

Breakfast at Berg

The final day would see us retrace our footsteps through the valley, without stopping at Kinney Lake to camp this time, back to the trail head. But we had one last morning of wilderness bliss: breakfast on a bench in front of Mount Robson, Berg Lake and Glacier.

It may have been the impact of that first morning cup of tea, but the glacier seemed bathed in a magical light and, as the sun shone down, it sparkled.

It was harder than I expected to turn our backs and walk away from that sight. But, the immense feeling of gratitude for having seen those views came with me as we walked back to the trail head; they were still with me when we crossed the bridge into the parking lot, had a group hug, and I burst into tears.

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Join us for another adventure…

A Nordic ski paradise… just eight minutes from our home

Camping in bear country: an ode to mountains and mates

A snowy day hiking in the footsteps of First Nation traders and conquering my fear of the cold

. . .

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