The way the Outdoor Club works, they usually get a huge influx of students at the start of the school year in September, and so in September 2019 they did raffles and split people into three trips around the province, to Nordegg, Jasper, and Kananaskis. As an artifact that I found, here’s the newsletter they sent out at the time:

I remember going to information sessions and raffle draws just outside the club room and also on the side of the Main Quad on campus itself.

Eventually I got into the middle Jasper trip, obviously, with 35 other people, and we split up into 8 cars and drove there on the afternoon of Sep 20, before returning to Edmonton on the afternoon of Sep 22. It was about a 4 hour drive west of Edmonton, and we stayed at Wapiti Campgrounds just south of Jasper. Here’s a map showing the relative distance of Jasper and the campgrounds from Edmonton:

And one just showing the area around Jasper, including the campgrounds, the current wildfire (as of July 26 2024) just east of the township. I’m mildly surprised to learn that these are marked on Google Maps too. Also marked is the Sulphur Skyline Trail, which is where we went for hiking on Sep 21 2019.

We also had to split up into different groups for tents, and the “leader” of each group was in charge of borrowing a tent from the Outdoor Club’s clubroom and then returning it at the end. When I went to sign up for the tents, I noticed that there weren’t enough groups formed yet, so I ended up making my own group and getting a couple other Jessicas in the group as well, so three of the four girls in that tent ended up sharing the same name. The club also provided sleeping bags for everyone, which we also had to pick up from the clubroom, and the tent was ultimately loaded into the car that I was taking anyway, and other people helped set it up and tear it down as well, so it wasn’t much of an extra hassle to be the one in charge of a tent, it was mostly making sure all the pieces were accounted for and the tent didn’t go missing somewhere along the way. We booked the camp sites P4, P5, P6, P7, P8, and P9, and the campgrounds looked something like this, with one or two tents per campground.

The weather was cool but dry, daytime highs were in the low teens Celsius and nighttime temperatures were just above freezing, so it was somewhat cold but there wasn’t snow at least. Our car arrived late in the evening on the first night, and we spent some time hanging out with everyone else around the campfire before we went to bed.

The next day, we woke up bright and early to get ready for our hike, which was the main event of the trip. I remember borrowing some hot water from someone else who had brought along a kettle, to cook some instant cup noodles that I had brought along, then taking refuge inside the car of the driver that had gotten my group here to eat my noodles. After breakfast, our convoy drove off to that Sulphur Skyline Trail marked on the maps above, going through Jasper and then some ways north until we ended up in a carpark, and then hiking up a trail from that carpark all the way to the top of a small mountain. I brought Tigey along, of course, so this was both my and his first trek to a mountaintop peak. Or at least mountain ridge.

Many pictures were taken of the entire event, including the hike, by the red Olympus Tough TG-5 camera that I brought along, and even more were shared by other people in a shared group drive afterwards. I liked that particular camera though because not only was it (supposedly) built rugged and thus could be taken along on hikes and such, but it was also waterproof, so I could stick the camera underwater to try to take the occasional fish photo, though it was more a party trick than anything else for the people who didn’t realize that it was waterproof and were watching me.

I was walking along fairly slowly since I wasn’t exactly in the best of shape, but I did make it to the top, which not everyone did, a couple of people did give up along the way and just went back down to the carpark to wait. There were lots of random other hikers there too, some even with their dogs in tow. I basically went up solo and came back down with a group of three or four other people, one who had hurt her leg or something like that. They mostly talked to each other as I hung back a bit to listen. I wasn’t feeling particularly sociable since who has the breath for talking when hiking? I also had a first aid kit with me though so I felt responsible for hanging back with that slightly injured girl just in case.

Here are some pictures from the hike segment of the trip. Views from the bottom of the trail by the carpark area:

And the trail on the way up:

And part of the group I walked with on the way down:

And some pictures from around the top of the Sulphur Skyline Ridge:

Me with anime “aho hair”:

There’s even a panoramic shot:

And a couple of group shots:

It looks like 34 of 36 got up the mountain ridge, which matches what I remember as well. I remember thinking that a lot of the mountains that we could see from where we were looked like big piles of salt. I loved looking at all the trees though, these sorts of treelines strongly remind me of the map editor in Heroes of Might and Magic 3, of all things.

We went back down after that to the nearby Miette Hot Springs, though the “hot springs” were just some weird squarish swimming pool of hot water instead of actual Japan-like hot springs. No one in our group actually used the springs, and we just utilized the bathrooms there before moving onwards.

We also stopped off at a nearby lake, Pyramid Lake, located just north of Jasper. Right by Pyramid Island, which is a scenic photo spot right by the lake, though I don’t know that we were actually on the island itself.

We sat around a while and chilled out, with several people including me doffing our shoes and socks and wading around in the lake. I used my camera underwater here for kicks but did not find anything interesting to photograph, just a bunch of rocks and dirt.

We then went down to Jasper itself for dinner. I don’t have any pictures of the town itself, though I remember it being very nice with a mountainous backdrop. We split into two or three groups to find a different place to eat at so we wouldn’t overcrowd one restaurant, and our group walked along a long street with rows of little shops and restaurants on either side, and finally settled down outside a restaurant to eat at. I did take a picture of my group as we ate (my seat, with the corresponding pink shoulder bag that I used at that time, was on the far right).

That was the only photo in Jasper itself that I had, none of the ones shared by other people on the street contained any Jasper township photos.

We returned to our Wapiti Campgrounds campsite after that, and a bunch of us went down a short slope from the campsite to the western bank of the Athabasca River, where we put out some chairs and stared up into the night sky, filled with a billion stars. My camera could not take photos of that though. One day I will get a proper camera and learn astrophotography.

This is the only photo on this page that is not taken by me. It’s a photo of some other people coming down the little slope from the campgrounds to the river bank. We had to climb back up to the campgrounds on the way back too. I had bought and brought along a low chair and a small lantern for this, and I banged the lantern on some rocks on the way back — I think one of the handles came loose and dropped off or something there. The lantern itself wasn’t of very high quality though, as it stopped working soon after I reached back home as well.

Anyway clouds started to roll in and it was getting cold so we didn’t stay that long. I also remember sitting out on my chair wrapped in my jacket and reading a book or something like that outside the tent after everyone else had gone to sleep already, as I partially enjoyed the peace and quiet without people around and the serenity of the wild, and partially wanted to be pretentious and channel my inner Rin.

The next morning, we all got up and packed up, ready to leave the campgrounds and head home. The organizers decided to stop off at a couple more places in the morning before we went home though, the first place being Horseshoe Lake, where we went for a quick hike around the lake and where some people even stripped down and did dives into the water:

And the other place being Athabasca Falls. Both of these were located on a road called Icefields Parkway, south of Jasper. I think the mobile network was spotty on the way here between the northern road from Edmonton to Jasper, but this southern route, which was slightly longer, was even worse in that regard, with basically no Internet for long stretches. Also, Icefields Parkway is quite the ominous road name, isn’t it?

We headed back to Edmonton after this, after stopping by at some town or other on the way back for some burgers. The car dropped us off at the University itself, and I took the tent and sleeping bag up to my workplace office, where I could store it until the next day since the clubroom wasn’t open on a Sunday (Sep 22 2019). That was the convenient part about having an office, I didn’t have to bring the tent back home and then back here again via train or something. This was also my first time, that I remembered anyway, at my workplace office on a Sunday, so it was nice and liminal. I then headed home from there, and dragged the tent and my own sleeping bag back to the clubroom office the next day.

And that was it for the trip! In terms of animals, we saw various types of moose or elk (I can’t tell them apart), squirrels, dogs on leashes, and also a mother bear and her baby bear at the side of the highway at one point. Only from a distance though. Several cars had stopped closer to peer at the two and someone even had a camera on a tripod set up on the side of the highway.

I never went on another trip with the club again, since as mentioned COVID-19 hit soon after, but hey, maybe in the future. I did sign up for another thing, a graffiti tour around Downtown to see nice er.. wall paintings, but that got scuttled.