Callaghan Lake: The Broken Sandal
I was looking for neat places to go with our canoe. We decided on Callaghan Lake, intending to camp at the supposedly nice camping spot on the opposite end of the lake. I even recruited a friend and his two kids. However, when we arrived to Callaghan Lake, and looked at the park map, we discovered that camping at the other end isn’t allowed. It turned out I had looked at some blog posts and a guidebook, but hadn’t thought to check the park website… We were also warned about it being grizzly territory. Luckily there is a free campground right where we were going to put in, and there was even a free site. So we reluctantly changed our plans, and set up our tents in the empty site to save our spot.
Earlier this year we bought an inflatable canoe, an Innova Scout. We were actually inspired in part by the same friends who joined us on this trip. It was neat to see the two identical canoes out on the water. Every time we head out with the canoe, I have this feeling that there’s something special about it. It’s the calmness, but it’s also the independence of having our own “vehicle”. Being able to choose where we want to go, on the water. Something that I hadn’t thought of before getting the canoe is that being on a large body of water really opens up the views, since there are no trees in the way.
After setting up our tents we decided we’d paddle across Callaghan Lake to the other side. The views were jaw dropping – the Powder Glacier, Journeyman Peak and Les Gendarmes, and the unmistakable Black Tusk. The kids had lots of fun playing on the shore of the lake. Kids, water, mud, rocks, and logs are a pretty good combination.
The next morning we were ready to paddle across the lake again and hike up to Cirque Lake. The hike started out in the forest. It then took us steeply through some talus slopes. We could see Callaghan Lake far below us, and a different view of the mountains beyond. On this section the straps of one of my sandals gave in. Perhaps sandals weren’t such a good idea after all… I took off one of the shoulder straps from our backpack, and wrapped it around the sandal, which was somewhat workable. It wasn’t too confidence inspiring though, especially with Kai on my back, and I wasn’t looking forward to the descent.
We finally made it to a viewpoint above Cirque Lake. Everyone agreed that this was as far as we’d go. We had a nice well deserved lunch, and admired the views. Our friend had the idea to ask some passerby if they had a ski strap. I borrowed two, and that made the hike down much more manageable with my now two broken sandals. The next day I returned the straps, back in Vancouver, a different world. Soon enough we were back down at the canoes, and ready to paddle back across the lake.
Our friends caught a trout on the way back. They steamed it in a pot with a bit of water. I remembered that we had some leftover tortillas from lunch, so we had goodbye fish tacos. Neil started asking if we could go fishing some time. I thought – that’s something I’ve been meaning to get into, maybe it’s not that complicated? A couple of weeks later we bought a rod and fishing license and… haven’t caught a fish since. Maybe there’s more to it after all.
