The road from Elkford to the Elk Lakes Provincial Park is 40 miles of dirt road. 40 miles of hell. The potholes were horrendous. It took 1.5 hours to drive the 40 miles. Tara said she enjoyed it. What? Ok dear, next time you are driving. Along the way we saw a moose and also picked up a hitchhiker, a through hiker who was doing section B of the Great Divide Trail. I knew the GDT ran through here but did not know it went along this road. He was grateful he did not have to walk the very boring road.
We finally made it to the trailhead and started the hike. It was an hour later than I wanted. I gave the GDT hiker one of my Cokes and we parted ways.
There are plenty of park signs along the trail pointing the way to Petain Falls or Petain Basin or similar. Some of them are scratched out. Some are not scratched out. Why are they scratched out, you ask? Well let me tell you! There are five namesakes in this area: Petain Mountain, Petain Glacier, Petain Creek, Petain Basin, Petain Falls. They are (were) named after General Phillipe Petain, a commander of the French Army in WWI. In WWII, he collaborated with the Nazis and was convicted of treason in 1945. The landmarks were named in 1918 or 1919 by the British Columbia government. The name was rescinded around the year 2021.
There are two really stupid things about this: Firstly, why did it take 75 years for the BC government to figure out that Petain was a Nazi ally and revoke the name? Really? They did not know before 2021 that Petain was a Nazi? It is all because of the idiotic wokeness in the world today that they finally decided to rescind the name, I am certain. Ok so great, they rescinded the name. Here is the second stupid thing: give these major landmarks a new name! Don’t just say they are “unnamed” (which is what they did). This is a major mountain, major glacier, and a major creek and they are all now officially “unnamed”. Well … the (reliable) map I am currently using still says Petain Creek (though it does say the mountain and glacier is unnamed). If the creek is still Petain then the waterfall is still Petain Falls. I am going to continue calling the waterfall Petain Falls until the BC government wakes up and gives it a proper name (it might be a long time).
Enough of that dumbness, let’s get to the hike now, shall we? This is Grizzly country. I read multiple reports that people had seen grizzly bears on this hike. I have never backpacked in Grizzly country before. I remember I did one day hike in Alaska where there was a mother grizzly in the area with a cub and the mom had been reported to charge some hikers. I did not have bear spray then but I did the hike quickly and did not see anything. We all had bear spray for this hike. I felt that it was safe enough for Journey to be off leash for the most part. She hiked right beside Tara or myself or in between us for 100% of the hike. She never strayed off the trail. There was just one section where I put her on leash because it was quite a brushy area. Other than that, she was perfectly fine. It has been annoying me recently when I hear non dog owners tell dog owners what to do. Your dog must be on leash! Don’t be a schmuck. I am a responsible dog owner and I know my dog is perfect off leash and deserves to be off leash. The other thing that is apparently abundant on this trail is porcupines. I read that some people saw as many as six porcupines on this trail! I certainly did not want Journey to get up too close to one of those. Yikes. Did we see any porcupines or bears? Keep reading.
Tara’s pack was only 20 pounds or so but she was struggling with it. Lynal offered to carry it for her. It was incredibly nice of him but in a way I wish he hadn’t. They hiked on ahead of us to the waterfall. Tara did not make it. We found a lovely spot by the creek and decided to camp there. But Lynal had her pack. I ran up the trail to find them, almost all the way to the waterfall. They were just on the way back down. We walked back to camp and I set up the tent and we made dinner. We filtered water from the creek. The water from the Elkford campground the night before was horrible but this 4000 year old glacier water tasted amazingly good. After dinner, I hiked back up to the waterfall by myself. I could have (should have) taken Journey but decided to leave her with Tara at camp.
Petain Falls is 305 ft. high and it is absolutely massive. There is a great overlook for the waterfall. You can also go right up to the base of it as well (which I did of course). The mist was tremendous, making it difficult to photograph from up close. Other waterfalls were pouring off the cliff as well from different glaciers. Crossing the creek was not possible. It was absolutely roaring. All of this from glacier melt. I wanted to cross because it’s the only way to see the upper tiers of the falls (it’s over 1200 ft. high in total). I was bummed about that but I expected it. I did walk back along the ridge as far as I could and was at least able to glimpse the upper tiers.
On the hike back to camp I saw a porcupine. This was very cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before. No grizzy bears though. It was a remarkable (and prickly) Day 2 on the Canada road trip in Elk Lakes Provincial Park.
