We spend the afternoon on the road. Arrive at the Mount Robson Visitor Centre at about 6pm with loads of time to ponder booking our proposed hike for the next 5 days. We talk to the chatty lady at the desk, get the lowdown on what campsites we can stay at over the next four nights, what the weather forecast is and the ins and outs of camping in the Berg Lake area. After watching the short (13 min.) orientation video and a short discussion, Debbie and I book four nights camping on the trail and at Berg Lake. We are not sure how hard the hike will be and are a conservative in our choices.
Tomorrow we will walk 11 km to the Whitehorn campground. The next morning we will tackle the very steep 520M elevation gain and hike 8km to the Marmot campground. This will be our base for exploring the valley on the north side of Mount Robson. After 2 nights at Berg Lake we will the return to Whitehorn, an easy walk we hope, and spend our last night there before walking out the last 11km to the staging area. 10 minutes and $80 later we are committed to the next few days.
We spend the night at the Robson River Campground. It is just 1km west of the Visitor Centre. It is the smaller of the two campgrounds at the foot of Mount Robson, having 15 or 20 reasonably private sites and access to heated flush toilets, showers and hot water for washing dishes. It is raining when we start to set up the tent. Ugh! We are fairly fast and the tent is hardly damp by the time we have the fly on. Shortly after we have everything set up, the rain pauses for a while so we walk the campground loop to warm up. There is not much to do outside so we retire to the tent to work on a couple of crossword puzzles. It rains most of the night. The campground has one drawback, it is very close to the highway and the trucks ply the route all night long. We’re tired so it is not a big deal.
The mountains are the mountains and the weather changes every 10 minutes. We are hopeful we are going to have good weather in the morn.