Labour Day Weekend Backpacking trip - Birdwood Traverse K-country.

A late start on Sunday morning and we started our trip. First stop was Burstall Pass but Stacey spotted a nice grassy slope that would provide us with a 2km shortcut. Up we go and finally we found ourselves on Birdwood pass. Once at the pass it got a bit chilly so Stacey decided to get some warmer clothes on and I took the opportunity to look at the map and figure out where to go. At that moment I happen to glance up I see this large grizzly bear walking directly towards us. OH S*&T!!!! We start yelling and the bear is not changing direction, Stacey frantically tries to ties her boots and I get the bear spray out and start assembling the bear flare. All this takes about 20seconds but it feels like minutes. Finally the bear hears us (he was upwind) and we start moving right and he starts going to our left. We finally breathe a sight of relief realizing that he was letting us by and he didn't want anything to do with us.



Bear going on his merry way.


Caterpillar on the scree slopes. Apparently the small things in life amazed us for the next 30 minutes after our encounter.


Going up to the high col.


Looking back down towards Birdwood Pass.

At the end of day 1, we reached a high col and got a sight of Mt. Smuts.

From the Col we also got a nice view of the Birdwood lakes. We set our camp next to the upper lake (to the left, just off the picture). And of course we had a permit. Not a bad site, considering that our closest neighbour was on the lower lake and it was the long weekend.

Stacey lost a clog in the fight against the brush.

This shot was taken at sunrise. After meeting a grizzly bear, you can't expect to get much sleep that night.

On our way back down, between Mt Smuts and Mt BIrdwood. Once we got on the road we hitch hiked the remaining 5 km to our car, luckly Stacey is also a car magnet and we got a ride from the first car that passed.