Hiking Cirque Peak in Banff

 Charlie and I recently returned from our second hiking trip to Banff.  The first trip was 2 years ago.  I wanted to go back and hike more in the beauty of the Canadian Rockies before we were too old to do hard hikes.  Ha! Our first big hike was Cirque Peak via Helen Lake.  You access this hike from the Icefields parkway (beautiful drive in the area).  This is a hard, out and back hike that is 10.2 miles and has 3700 feet of elevation gain.  Check out the alltrails link HERE

The first 3 or so miles begin in a forest.  It's a bit muddy (it had been raining the night before and the morning of the hike), and we were hemmed in by the trees.  

The views begin to open up as you hike above the trees and enter the alpine meadow.  I love alpine meadows!

As you fully enter the meadow, you come to the base of Helen Lake.  Helen Lake is not as vibrantly colorful as many of the lakes in the Canadian Rockies are, but it's still very pretty and the setting is so serene.  You can see Cirque Peak right behind the lake in this picture.

Cirque peak doesn't look that imposing in this picture.  Looks can be deceiving.  While this is not a technical hike (I don't do technical hikes), this climb is a huge cardio workout!  There were points where Charlie and I both felt nauseous on the climb.  At one point, right below the summit, Charlie was seeing "stars" and had to sit for a minute.  It's possible some of the difficulty for us was due to the fact we had not been in the mountains for 24 hours yet.  Perhaps our bodies had not adjusted to the altitude.  The majority of the last part of the hike is on "treadmill scree."  You take a step forward and it feels like you slide 3/4 of that step backwards.  Our hiking poles were helpful at this point.

The views from the top made all the pain worth it!  How many hikes can you see multiple glacier lakes when you arrive at the top?  At the top you can you see a glacier (Bow glacier) waterfall into a small (iceberg) lake which waterfalls into the larger (Bow) lake!  The hikes are so rewarding here!