12,500 Paddle Strokes gets you where?

Maligne Lake on a sunny, warm, non-binding day is one of the best places on planet earth to be. Don't believe me? Then come see it for yourself. You can take a very nice boat tour every half hour or so that takes you down this gorgeous  lake but being stupid I much prefer to work for my reward. So 12,500 paddle strokes  for me was the price of admission to one of the most spectacular lakes in which to wet your oar.

Spirit Island is what the tourists come to see on their hour long boat tour but as I mentioned in a previous blog for me the journey is as important as the destination. Spirit Island is 8.84 miles from the kayak put-in. You can do the math round trip but either way it's as long as paddle as I care to do in a day. Trying to be efficient I set a compass course of 120 magnetic and headed point to point quickly easing in to a cadence of fifty paddle strokes per minute.

The tour boats are very courteous slowing to wake speed as they pass hand powered craft. Still,the boats are big enough to send out some nice rollers of waves which distracts from the quick reintroduction to paddling and the realization that I haven't been out in the boat often enough this year. But that always seems to be the case. The lake's surface, in between tourist boat wakes. Is so smooth it's hard to think I'm moving at all. Looking over the side of the kayak the water vanishes as all I see is fluffy white clouds and stunning mountain Vistas reflecting back at me.

Two hours and six minutes later (thank you Garmin GPS  bike computer which is just at home on the water as on my handlebars) I arrive at Spirit Island. The tourist boats all stop here but your technically  only half way down the lake. There are only a couple of places to camp on Maligne Lake - Spirit Island is one and another is at the far end of the lake. We've amped at Spirit Island before but next time we're  up this way we'll  take a couple extra days and include a paddle of the entire lake.

For today Spirit Island is the planned turnaround but having been here before I know a secret. Another half mile paddle around a point of trees and you are in a section of the lake that I can only call one of nature's  cathedrals. I'm not religious in the traditional sense but coming round the point and having the lake all to myself made me at peace in the moment like I too seldom get to experience. Resting the paddle on the deck of the kayaks I just sat and absorbed my surroundings. Not a breath of wind to disturb the surface of the lake and not a sound at all to disrupt a perfect spot at one of its most tranquil  moments. Far from feeling like a visitor I felt at one with the world  around me. Before we started this trip  my wife Sophie had given me a new sweatshirt with John Muir's timeless words "the mountains are calling and I must go." I don't know if John Muir  ever sat in a canoe in a place such as this but his words were meant for Maligne Lake on a day like today.

Of course I still had to paddle back and ultimately I spun the kayak's nose around and headed  back the way I had come.

Maligne Lake is about 30 miles from Jasper and the drive alone is worth the time. You're perhaps getting tired of hearing about our bear sightings but on the drive back to town we did see another bear. Actually two, a momma and her baby cub, high up in an aspen tree eating it's leaves. As many bears as we have seen this trip that was pretty special. All in all a perfect end to a perfect day...