Canada road trip! I’ve wanted to do this backpacking trip to Petain Falls in the Canadian Rockies for a long time. I had a great plan to backpack here with my wife Tara and my sister and brother in law. Tania and Lynal did not want to backpack but they said they’d do it as a day hike. We met up with them at the campground in Elkford for the first night.
There were a lot of fire trucks on the road to Elkford. At least I thought they were fire trucks. There was smoke on the horizon. Was there a new fire in the area? It looked pretty thick up ahead, the exact location where we would be hiking the next day. This would completely ruin the trip. Well I found out they were not fire trucks but mining trucks! There is a huge coal mining operation here and they work day and night. The traffic is constant 24 hours of the day. That certainly explains all the noise throughout the night in the campground with cars driving back and forth, and drag racing in the night as well! Argh!
After setting up camp and eating dinner I took Journey on an evening hike to Josephine Falls. Everyone else was saving their energy for the next day so it was just the two of us going on this five mile hike.
I would likely never be back in Elkford again so I wanted to do this hike while I had the chance. I was not sure where to start the hike. It should be obvious but there was no place to park and there were no signs. Although I’m sure my planned route would have worked fine I was at the wrong location. A ranger happened to be there and he told me where the proper trailhead was located. Perfect. Thank you sir.
It was a pretty easy to hike to the main waterfall. Josephine Falls is 47 ft high. It is a gorgeous drop on the Fording River. You cannot see the falls from the fence along the cliff so I had to cross over it and scramble down to a spot where I could photograph it. It was too sketchy for Journey so I left her up at the fence line. She waited perfectly for me as usual. There’s also a middle and lower falls which I went down to. The middle falls was just a small drop and unfortunately there was no view of the lower falls. We hiked back up to the car, drove back to the campground, and went to bed (or tried to!). It was a beautiful Day 1 on the Canada road trip in the Canadian Rockies.
