Hiking Iceline Trail — Snows Out West

You start off by hiking past Takakkaw Falls

We opted to stop by Hidden Lake on our way up

Can you see the glacier above the waterfall?

At the end of the hike, you can tell the sky got dark fast!

Not the greatest picture of us, but I think it shows how happy we all were to be caught in the rain.

Hi everyone! So I'm going a little bit out of order and jumping ahead to post a little recap from our hike up the Iceline Trail. The Iceline Trail is one of the most gorgeous trails in the entire Canadian Rockies (other bloggers words not mine!) and I couldn't have agreed more.

We started our day by first hiking to the base of Takakkaw Falls. You can get right under the waterfall and even climb up the hill beside the waterfall if you want to. After hiking to the falls we began our trek to the Iceline Trail. The trail up to Iceline is short and steep with a TON of switchbacks. Within minutes all four of us were huffing and puffing and we were astounded at how high we climbed in such a short amount of time. On our way up, a guy hiking down recommended we stop at Hidden Lake so we did, it was definitely worth it. No one else was there and the water was emerald green and so clear. You could see all the fallen tree logs in the bottom of the lake! After Hidden Lake we continued our climb up to Iceline. When we got to Iceline we were higher than Takakkaw Falls across the valley and we could see the huge glacier above the falls that fed the river. We could also see that there was a storm on the horizon. The wind wasn't blowing in our direction and I kept an eye on the storm which appeared to be moving across the horizon in front of us, not towards us. However, about a mile later when we were almost to the top of the bluff the wind shifted and whipped into our faces and we all knew we were going to be hit with the storm! Michael and my dad scurried a bit further to see the remnants of the glacier at the top of the bluff before we all began scurrying down towards the safety of the tree line. Sure enough, within a few minutes it began to rain on us and thunder rang out around us. We were pretty far out of the trees at this point so we hurried as fast as we could while still keeping a safe speed, the mountain was steep and if we had gone fast we would've slipped. The thunder sounded so unreal because it echoed through the mountains. I can't describe the sound of it, but it was unlike anything I had ever heard! A few bolts of lightening also cracked around us. Michael and I love getting caught in mountain top thunderstorms and hiking in the rain but I felt so bad that it was raining on my parents while they were hiking on their vacation, but when I turned around to look at them they both had huge smiles on and looked happy as clams. They were actually really excited to be caught in a Rocky Mountain thunderstorm in the mountains... figures. But we hiked down a majority of the mountain in the rain and by the time we got to the base the rain had stopped! We got back into the car, soggy clothes and all and headed down the road to see Emerald Lake before heading home!