Oh Canada! 2013 Trip – Finally Dry Friday

We woke up early to catch the sunrise, and much to our surprise, it was actually dry! We headed out to Mosquito…errr.. Pyramid Island to grab some sunrise photos. By the way, sunset is 10:30 (stays light until 11:15 ish) and sunrise is 5:30 (gets light around 4:45):

We ran across this little dude:

And momma:

…and these guys…

…On the way back into town. Once in town we found a few more of their extended family munching on the landscaping:

After breakfast, we headed back into the Park for more hiking:

We stopped by Punch Bowl Falls overlook on the way to Sulfur Springs:

Once we got to the end of the road:

We hiked up Sulfur Skyline Trail. This trail climbs 2,350 ft in elevation over 2.5 miles. Most of that elevation gain was toward the end of the trail as you get closer to the summit (naturally). There were more than a few sections where I was wishing for a ladder to climb up as I think it would have been easier than walking up it 😆 The wife did an awesome job and made it to the summit with me, though I admit I was carrying her pack as well as mine at the end there. But she still made it!

The start of the trail seems easy enough since it’s paved, but it’s a good 15% grade:

It eventually starts to turn into a rocky track:

With some neat early summer flowers popping up along the way:

After awhile, you start to poke out through the tree line:

And you can start seeing things:

Waaaay off in the distance you can see the parking lot we started hiking from, and there was quite a bit of elevation we still needed to gain:

The wife did manage to find a friend or two along the way up:

We reached the first plateau and took a look around before finishing the rest of the hike up to the summit:

There was a giant marble rock sitting on the plateau (over 6′ tall). Keep this rock in mind for later:

There’s the parking lot again:

We then started wandering up the rest of the way to the summit:

Bit of a panorama of the summit view:

Some neat rocks at the top:

And flowers:

The moss on the rocks was this awesome orange color:

And of course, nature girl found another friend to take pictures of:

We loaded back up and headed down the mountain, remember the giant marble boulder? That’s it in this photo (we’re about halfway down from the summit to the plateau):

Past the very colorful pine cones:

There were a few big horn sheep floating around the parking area when we returned:

We headed back towards town:

There was an old coal mine town near the main road, so we hiked around it some. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see other than some flowers and minor structures: