One more off the list. This one is a complicated hike. Lots of factors have to align just right in order to do this hike. First off you have to get across the lake. I'm not the swiftest hiker so the Crypt lake shuttle doesn't afford enough time if you run into troubles. So I would use my own transportation to get across, unfortunately unless you own a motor boat, a canoe is the only option. If you canoe the weather has to be right, ie. no wind...in Waterton...yeah right! Next you want to do it later in the season because you need to fjord a river and want is lower if possible. So anyways these conditions seemed favorable on this day and even though they were not ideal, we did get it done. So my son and I headed up early in the morning and were canoeing across the bosporous by sunrise. It was windy and thus we only went across the bosporous and hiked from there to the crypt landing. We left our canoe on the shore and upon return there was no canoe? I guess we hadn't hidden it well enough from the wind and it had blown like 50 feet down the shore, it had a big dent in it but luckily...and I mean luckily it was still there otherwise that would have been a long hike out that night. Anyways we eventually got off the trail just after Burnt rock falls and bushed through the bush for a bit and eventually came to the stream/river. I didn't think it was that wide but where we crossed it was probably about 15 feet across and about 2 & 1/2 feet deep. We made it and started heading up the west slope of Mt. Boswell. It was a pretty steep hike up to the summit, and we were dreading coming down such a steep incline. We reached the summit and had a beautiful view all around. The higher peaks had snow on them which made for some great views. We found the summit register and as my son was looking through it we noticed that on Aug 23, 2000 my old roommates Brian and Gerry Stewart had summited on that day. On that date I was actually living with them. It was great to see that in the register. It has been around 13 years since their passing and it was good to reflect on their lives as we hiked the rest of the day. Our descent wasn't too bad, we took it really slow as we knew we didn't have to rush back to the boat. The fall colors this day were great to see in the Park. We eventually as mentioned above made it back to our canoe, that being a little tender mercy that it was still there. We canoed across in much less wind and packed up and headed home. Now just one more named summit to go!!!
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| Sunrise view of Prince of Wales with Crandel as the back drop |
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| Loon Lake with Richards behind it |
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| Fresh Bear track |
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| Crossing the stream |
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| Crypt Falls |
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| West slope of Boswell we climbed up |
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| Not sure why some of the needles turn this color? |
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| Looking down on where we came from, Crypt Lake just in view on center right |
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| As mentioned above summit register page with Gerry and Brian's ascent (side note their father Cal, was the Doctor that delivered me as a baby) |
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| View of Upper Waterton Lake and the townsite from the summit |
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| Summit Picture |
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| Close up of the townsite with snow caped mountains in the distance |
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| Crossing the stream again |
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| There didn't seem to be a narrower crossing spot |
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| Fall colors were great |
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| Loon lake again with Vimy behind it |
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| More fall colors! |
Panorama on Summit
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