The Sulphur Skyline Hike

Our "big hike" for Jasper was the Sulphur Skyline hike, which is North of Jasper town. It's an 8km summit hike and starts from the hot springs car park. 

As we drove into the car park in the morning, there was a smallish black bear foraging beside the road. We didn't think much of it, because you see them all over the place. So we got geared up and started the hike. About 15 minutes in we both decided we were far too hot in our thermals, so we stopped by a seat to take out pants off. Just as I had my pants off I looked up to see someone coming up the path. It didn't take me long to realise it was actually a black bear. I'm not sure which would have been worse. I wasn't really thinking that clearly, so I just grabbed the bear bell that was attached to my pack and started ringing it like crazy. the bear gave us the once over before heading up a gully into the bush. Just afterwards I felt like it was probably silly to ring the bell but I now realise since we were downwind of him, he may not have known we were there.

A little further on the trail we came across a fresh bear print in the mud. It seems like the bear likes to use the trail.

We really enjoyed this hike, it's a pretty nice even climb until the last 500m where it gets quite steep above the tree line.

The view from the top was amazing and basically 360 degrees. There were a few wild flowers out along the trail, and some blueberry bushes had started to flower too, so it was quite a pretty walk.

It only took us 3 1/2 hours to do the full hike, even though I was feeling rubbish and was walking slower than normal. And we spend quite a while at the top eating jerky sticks and taking photos. When we got back there was a decent sized herd of mountain sheep in the car park, which looked like they had rabies because they were in the middle of shedding.