Martin & Erin's Adventures

Photogenic tales of literally quitting our jobs and running away out into the great wide world... together.

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lots of stuff

Oh, uh, okay, so, we went to Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and then lived in the UK for a bit. We then went to Germany for 34c3 as planned then to Prague and back to Germany. We’re in Germany now, hanging out on a hacker farm. Off to Spain in 3 weeks, and then getting married.

Things are awesome and they’re only gonna get better from here on out.

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Jasper and the Next Leg

Upon our arrival to Jasper we followed the directions of the young lady who dropped us off at the edge of town (right off the highway): follow the trail and that’ll take you into town.

We stretched our legs after the long drive from Lake Louise to Jasper and made the hike into town from the Trans-Canadian Highway. The first thing we did was walk under a train bridge (while a train was on it). It was loud.

We made our way into Jasper which, little did we know at the time, would become a comfortable week-long stay. I say comfortable in the sense that we had a nice tent to sleep in every night, but it was a bit... under the radar, so we had to pack up and take our things with us every day.

We spent days lazing around in the green spaces near the visitor’s center watching (and hearing) the trains go by --

Afternoons/evenings in the local brewing company and/or anyplace we found that served good beer at reasonable prices and had electric outlets --

We languished in the internet and Martin was able to catch a footy match (live!) on a really fucking big TV --

We ate some nachos, burgers, and generally had a good time.

We met a fellow bum who was travelling with two dogs: one big, one small. The big one was old, soft, and gentle. The little one was young, content, and just wanted a warm lap to sleep on. We exchanged words with him a few times, and on the third day we ended up drinking cider and whiskey in the green space near the visitors’ centre. The little dog fell asleep on my lap very promptly. I fell asleep not long afterward, and much talk of trainhopping, listening to Days n Daze, and more drinking commenced while I was taking a nap. A good night was had by all.

The next morning we woke up under our cozy blanket on the porch of the visitors’ centre, nudged by an employee telling us we had to move. I roused Martin and we transferred ourselves to another spot where we slept for another couple of hours (it was a bit wet so we got out the tarp). It was about there we realized the difference between “chilling in the park” and “being tragically homeless” is whether you have legitimate looking sleeping gear out or not. Blanket and backpacks: A-OK. Tarp and fluffy sleeping quilt: Doesn’t matter how much that ultralight shit cost you, you look homeless as hell fam.

We charged up all our shit in Jasper then headed up the Saturday Night Lake Loop to a backcountry campground on Minnow Lake.

Poorly named, it ended up; the lake had very limited fishing opportunity, almost none from the shore. We were at the reeds’ behest, which caused us to give up in frustration after no more than ten casts.

The weather was subpar the entire time (overcast, cold), I came down with a not-great cough (it hurt), and the trail/campground wasn’t very scenic (especially with the smoke pollution from the fires in BC; the air smelled like smoke if you sniffed, and the mountains weren’t even visible above the lake’s immediate treeline for days).

We met a Dutch guy who was very enthusiastic about going barefoot and plastic liquor bottles (he apparently had pretended to be Scottish while he was in Quebec) and a couple who had never backpacked to a campsite before who worked at an Apple store in Edmonton. They advised us that AlpineAire (a brand of dehydrated camping food) is likely to taste like cleaning chemicals. I’m honestly not surprised, and it makes me feel even better about our continually honed camping menu (instant mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, Knorr sides, fresh parmesan or other cheeses, semi-dried meat sticks, etc etc...) on both price point and flavor point.

We hiked back to Jasper after staying at Minnow awhile and, while it was all downhill, didn’t really spare our legs. Ends up prolonged downhill can also take a toll on calves. Who knew.

Once we got back to Jasper we stayed a night, to restock (re-drink), re-food, recharge (electronically and otherwise), then our last night in our precious homeless-camping spot to hit the road.

We hiked to the highway, West, or Ouest (French) as it told us, and attempted to position ourselves in a strategic spot for hitchhiking. I was afraid it was going to take awhile, since there wasn’t too much traffic going west in the first place and people were mostly either dayhiking or in campers.

Maybe just shy of a half an hour elapsed and a couple in a crossover stopped to pick us up; Martin asked if they were French “No”, then French-Canadian “No...” honestly, after so long listening to people in Canada speak French, most foreign languages that roll off the tongue sound French. It ended up the couple was Polish, and we were able to stick our packs in their “trunk”, and they were super, super, SUPER fucking nice.

And they were going to Vancouver!

We ended up hitchhiking with them the entire way from Jasper to Vancouver, AND they dropped us off at our Airbnb. Regardless of that, though, they were really great people. I’ll omit their names here, but the guy was a developer (living in Canada a couple of years) and the girl was ex-IT (she definitely knew some sort of programming and had quit her job in Poland to come to Canada). When we told them our story of not really being able to be in the same country and quitting our jobs to be together, they definitely had a bit of a chuckle. I just hope we entertained them enough. I really liked them and I hope I can repay them in the future somehow because the drive was...8...9? hours and that’s really incredible, honestly. And after all that, they dropped us off at our airbnb.  The airbnb was an in-flight decision and reservation; the couple offered they could put us up if we didn’t find anywhere to sleep but they’d done so much already I couldn’t imagine asking that of them.  We found a room we could hang out and shower and cook dinner (woo more Kraft(tm) Dinner(tm) as is Canadian ritual) for a reasonable price, so we went for it.

I guess that concludes this segment of our trip; we exchanged emails and numbers with the couple who gave us a lift, and I really hope to repay them (somehow!) in the future, if not before we leave the country in two weeks. From here it’ll be exploring the city and finding our way to Vancouver Island -- from there to hippie mecca Tofino, which I think should be easily enough found and unfound, based on the miles of dreadlocks we’ve encountered telling us how great Tofino is.

Unfortunately, but skillfully, our Canadian leg of 2017 is drawing to a close.

- E

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An (almost) complete gear list

Here is, as far as we're aware, a mostly-complete gear list of everything we're travelling with. Might update if we remember anything else - Martin

Sleeping/habitation

Enlightened Equipment Accomplice two-person quilt

REI sleeping pad

NEMO sleeping pad

Mountainsmith Equinox 4 4-person tent

SeaToSummit aero premium pillow

Otwego inflatable pillow

Electronics

2x Thinkpad X220s

GBA SP with 2 games

3 backup battery packs (around 50k mAh total)

Amazon Kindle

SoundMagic E10 earphones

Skullcandy earphones

misc cables (usb type-c, type-b, etc) and adapters for devices

Universal outlet adapter

UK->US outlet adapter

Small electronics screwdriver set

Baofeng UV-5R

Pentax K-01

18-55mm and 40mm pancake lenses

2x Princeton tec headlamps

2x Princeton tec lanterns

2x Princeton tec flashlights

Tactical flashlight (AAA)

Aliexpress rechargeable tent light

Oneplus Two smartphone

Nexus 5X smartphone

Cookware/sustenance

Trangia 27-3 alcohol stove set

Methyl-hydrate fuel

Collapsible GSI Outdoors silicone mug

Non-collapsible plastic mug

LightMyFire titanium spork

Toaks titanium spork

Folding MSR plastic spoon

Big fork

Extra pot gripper

Food

Klean Kanteen 1900ml stainless-steel flask

Klean Kanteen 1182ml stainless-steel flask

2x 3l camelbak hydration packs

Sawyer 4l gravity filter

Assortment of herbs & spices in small screw-cap crafts pots

Packing equipment

Vaude Challenger 45+10 pack

Vaude Asymmetric 52+8 pack

Duluthpack medium shell purse

Outdoor Research 10l compression sack

20l drybag

2x 10l drybags

Sealine ultralight 5l drybag

2x 5l drybags

Bunch of ziplock bags for food

Clothing

His

Danner Fort Lewis 10inch

H&M black cotton cargos

Trespass zip-off light cargos

2x cotton tshirts

Sweat-wicking undershirt

Cotton boxer-briefs

Exofficio boxer-briefs

2x pair wool socks

Union jack cotton socks

Field & Stream wool flannel shirt

Green and black shemagh

Marmot long-sleeved top

Baseball cap

Big wooly hat

Beanie

Saltrock hoody

Decathlon waterproof jacket

Hers

Terramar CS short sleeve black tech top

One piece swimsuit

Black shemagh

Marmot grey long-sleeved warm layer

Marmot blue long-sleeved windshirt

Khaki capris (cotton)

Cabela's camo pants (cotton)

Blue plaid mini shorts (cotton)

Wigwam medium weight hiking socks

Smartwool heavy weight hiking socks

Star spangled socks

Regular 100% wool socks

Below-the-knee tall wool hiking socks

2x Exofficio mesh underwear

3x Puma lasercut underwear

Underarmour sports bra

Kill City red plaid jacket

Vinyl rain poncho

Buff

Accessories/attachments

3x big carabiners

3x smaller/misc carabiners

100ft black dacron line

2m x 3m blue tarp

Extra small bits of line we've found

Misc.

Official paperwork (passports, bank statements, etc)

Mahalo black soprano ukulele

Seidel Bluez Session C harmonica

Shakespeare 2-piece fishing rod and spinning reel

Box of fishing lures, etc

First aid kit containing basic dressings/otc painkillers, etc

Rite-in-the-rain hard-cover ruled notebook & HB pencil

Pacsafe RFID-blocking wallet

Lip balm

Toiletries (toothpaste, tooth brush, deodourant, etc)

Sunglasses/spare glasses

Muh bushcraft

Morakniv Bushcraft Black knife

Opinel no.9 locking folding knife

Condor crotalis knife

TOPS knives scandi trekker knife

Leatherman Skeletool

Leatherman Sidekick

2x ferro-rods & strikers

5x disposable Bic lighters

Corona camp saw

1.2lb Wilkos hatchet (hickory handle)

Blade-tech knife sharpener

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Hand progression

Yeah it hurt

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Home sweet home, but not anymore.

On to different places.

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Martin taking a swim.

Hector Lake, AB, Canadia.

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Hector Lake views. Home for awhile, but not quite long enough. Maybe that’s the sweet spot.

Hector Lake, near Lake Louise, AB, Canada.

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Proof we went to Lake Louise: you can see it through Martin’s earhole.

Lake Louise, AB, Canada.

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Alberta (actually BC) burning.

Banff, AB, Canada.

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Ek13 and Elk Lake views

bullwhip courtesy of awesome Canadian

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More Cr15 views

Heineken and cheese courtesy of the wonderful Canadians.

Banff, Alberta.

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Cr15 views

Banff, Alberta.

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Martin playing Dwarf Fortress 30km+ from the nearest civilization

Cr15, north of Banff, Alberta.

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Rice for dinner! (not actually exciting enough to warrant an exclamation mark).

Cr6, north of Banff, Alberta.

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Graffiti near Canmore, Alberta.

Mountains and chipmunks at Lake Minnewanka, near Banff, Alberta.

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We actually did laundry yesterday

Tim Horton’s, Jasper, Alberta, Canada.

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Long Time, Big Province

It’s been awhile. We’ve been in Canada for 24 days. It seems like it’s been ages and not at the same time.

We rolled into Banff in a rented car, big ol’ 2017 Toyota Camry (free full-size upgrade from the tiny, cheap car we paid for). This was cheaper than two people taking any of the shuttles to Banff. Insane, right? This way we got to stop wherever we wanted to as well, which was nice.

There we had our first Tim Horton’s experience. It was underwhelming, but cheap and reasonably tasty. I got something called a B.E.L.T. which is a BLT but on a bagel and has one of those egg “patties” in it too. The bagel was a pretzel bagel which made it all worth it. Since then, we’ve been to Tim Horton’s quite a few times and the novelty’s worn off.

We stayed at the International Hostel in Banff, which is expensive as hell for a hostel, and therefore shared a bed, which was comfier anyway. We were able to ditch our packs in their storage area and go out for some drinks, which we did, and “helped” (more like carried) some 19 year old kids who had gotten absolutely smashed get home to their campsite. Dumb kids. This was our first run in with dumb kids.

We headed out the next day to the trailhead at Lake Minnewanka. Well, that’s where we thought the trailhead was, and once there we asked just about everyone and no one knew where the ACTUAL trailhead was. We ran into some French guys doing the same route as us and we ended up hiking a few km back down the road looking for the trailhead which didn’t exist where they thought it was (to be fair, it was hidden) and we reached Upper Bankhead eventually (where the real trailhead was). We finally got on the trail at around 6pm and not feeling fresh whatsoever. We spent awhile getting to the campsite (all uphill on a gravelly road that was somewhat annoying to hike on) and spent time getting used to our packs. Once we were at the campsite we had a quick dinner and found a spot to pitch our tent (a secluded site on a bed of moss, which was heavenly for sleeping). We pitched it in the dark and slept pretty heavily.

The next day was the trek up to Cr15 (the campsites are named by landmarks and how many km they are from their respective trailheads). It was an easy enough hike and we spotted a few lines of packhorses/donkeys with their handlers going somewhere north of the campsite. We passed by a warden’s cabin and came to an unmarked three-fork and sat down to try to figure out where the campsite was; we realized then we’d left one of our two-way radios somewhere on the trail so Martin went back to attempt to find it (he didn’t). This was the second item we were relieved of prematurely (the first one being Martin’s hat, which he left in the lady’s car who had given us a ride to Lake Minnewanka. That was our first hitchhike, by the way). We crossed a tiny little bridge across a river after a French guy pointed us in the direction of the campsite and we set up camp. It was pretty wide-open which was great, since we got enough wind at the food/eating area to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

A short tangent here: the backcountry campsites are mostly laid out in a similar fashion. There’s a picnic table (of sorts), a fire pit with a grill, bear hangers for food/packs made from metal braided rope, and then the campsites are 50m-100m away from the food/eating areas. They also have pit toilets.

We stayed at Cr15 a couple nights and did a bit of laundry and reading in the sun, then headed to the last stop in our loop, a site called Ek13.

The hike from Cr15 to Ek13 was torturous. There was a significant elevation gain and the trail ran between/on top of the foothills of the Vermillion Range. The trail was pretty rough in places due to horse traffic (horses can really mess up soft trails). I almost lost a boot to a really deep spot of mud.

It started out so well though.

We had a nice saunter through dry riverbeds and followed the “trail is this way” hiker signs until the trail spat us out on a riverbank. But where was the bridge? After maybe an hour of looking upriver, downriver, and aroundriver, we asked someone at a horse stable a bit downriver of the trail how to get across -- ends up we just had to CROSS THE RIVER.

The river was waist deep, fast, and very cold. Martin helped me across and went back for our packs. We dried off and set out on our way. It was a long and arduous hike, but we got there. We pitched our tent in a nice spot not too out of the way and tried not to get murdered by mosquitoes during dinner. Some guys came in near midnight (we were still awake) and set up camp.

We made acquaintances with the guys who came in late -- they were two Canadians who were old friends and camping buddies. They had apparently brought an entire supermarket’s worth of food. Martin and I just looked on in disbelief as they pulled out fresh milk, fresh sausages, and even a 6 pack of fresh eggs. We had a giant breakfast with them as they were kind enough to offer to share everything. Martin was happy to have real milk in his tea (instead of the powdered stuff we’d been using). They left us some delicious yogurt-nut bars and some amazing dill soft cheese called Boursin (cheese! I was all over that). We planned to stay a couple nights... and then things went wrong.

Martin had gathered some dandelion greens to make a fresh sauteed side for some of the summer sausage we’d brought along. He was pouring the boiled off fat from the summer sausage into the greens when the fat/oil spat... badly... all over my right hand.

Cue screaming and 2nd degree burns.

An hour later after I’d held my hand in the glacial stream nearby we did our best to bandage it up and assess the damage. It blistered pretty good. There was fluid in all of them and it hurt like hell. I couldn’t really use it to do anything so we just sat around in our tent for a few days.

It helped that we were way up in the mountains and somehow were getting cellphone internet.

Our batteries were running out and my hand was healing, so we decided to head back into Banff after a short day-hike to Elk Lake. The Canadians were back from their unorthodox river camp (they didn’t bother crossing), and poured us some wine from a bag they’d brought (?!) and shared some slightly less legal substances as well. They were horrified at the state of my hand (it did look pretty bad, to be fair). Elk Lake was beautiful and teeming with fish, the sunset over the mountains was incredible, Martin tried to climb a slope but realized mountains are actually really fucking high, we saw some snow, and I managed to burst all my blisters (nooooo!).

The biggest fear about my hand was risk of infection but we did a good job at keeping it clean.  After the hike to the trailhead, which was long (and I was flagging badly near the end), we collapsed onto the shuttle back into Banff to stay another couple nights at the hostel. We had a good time in the city but fuck, it’s way too expensive.

We decided to hitch out north toward Jasper, originally intending to stay at the hostel but it was full. In fact, everything in Jasper appeared to be full besides the overflow campground a few miles north of town. We amended our plan, and I’m so glad we did.

We took a free shuttle up to Lake Louise, saw Lake Louise, saw all the tourists, saw a mother moose with her two baby (still huge) meese, and went back to the village site. We got advice on where to thumb from the Parks people and some firefighters and got water from an auto repair shop near the highway. A lone girl from British Columbia going to Saskatchewan Crossing for some film work gave us a lift maybe 15 minutes later. She dropped us off at the trailhead for Hector Lake, which was only a few km off the Icefields Parkway.

The campsite was full up but we got a tip off there was a really nice spot down on the point of the lake, to the left. And there was. We walked in, happy to find a place to sleep, and in awe of how fucking beautiful the lake was. It blew Lake Louise completely away in terms of beauty (and also there were barely any people). The barrier to entry was crossing another small river, but this time only knee-high and not as cold. I discovered some communal river-crossing shoes and did better at crossing this time.

We stayed there until the food ran out because it was such a nice spot. We laid by the lake, did a lot of reading, and canoeing in the free campground canoes. The last night before we were intending to leave, we heard some people yelling while we were about to settle into our tent. Ends up some kids had gone out in the canoes and gotten blown into the opposite shore (the wind picks up awfully quick out there and it’s a big lake). Awhile later we found them after lending a hand (and some lights) to the frightened teenagers. They were wet and cold and the girls were grateful but I don’t think the guys even said “thank you” for our rummaging through the brush for over 30 minutes to find them.

Some other group of guys originally offered them a place to stay that night but I guess they wanted to get the kids out of their hair so told them they’d lend headlamps and walk them to the river, so they ended up leaving late, around midnight, and that was that.

We hitchhiked from Hector Lake to Jasper courtesy of a nice German girl in a big truck. Item #3 went missing in her truck, a can of bear spray (1 of 2) which must’ve rolled under the seat during the drive. She dropped us off slightly out of town and we made the walk in.

Pictures and tales of Jasper to come in a later post.