Jasper Park was busier than Wells Grey. I stayed in the Wapiti campground, between the Icefields Parkway and the Athabaska River, south of the townsite. I hiked the trail into the Opal Hills one day, and Wilcox Pass the next. I did the Opal Hills hike on a clear sunny day, with good views for pictures of Maligne Lake and mountains to the east and south:
On Saturday August 5, I drove into Clearwater, and checked the information center for Wells Gray park.
Wells Gray has rugged rivers and trails. It lacks the iconic scenery of the national mountain parks but it is rougher and less spoiled.
I learned a lesson in Victoria living, trying to get into the Interior last Friday before the August long weekend. I had planned to pack Thursday night and get to the ferry early on Friday. One thing led to another. I had to sort through gear to make sure I had what I needed for a few days of hiking. I got to Swartz Bay at 10:50 AM, by which time there was a one sailing delay. I sailed at noon, arriving in Tswassen at 1:40. I thought getting across Vancouver to the TransCanada would be the hard part. The TransCanada was congested from Burnaby out as far as Abbotsford. The traffic would move at 20-30 kph, sometimes coming to complete halt. I think it took about 3 hours to get as far as Abbotsford. The radio news was full of stories about ferry waits, accidents and traffic delays.
Another new release of MT, another upgrade. The FTP chugs along, the upgrade is easy. Once again, some little surprizes. The new online manual is clear enough, but the installation documents were not. There was a plugin for MT 3.2 called BigPAPI, which has been superceded by functions in MT 3.3. One of the instructions missing from the installation Doc was to turn off BigPAPI and plugins that used it. So I had some interesting error messages when I tested the new installation.
