Hello hello hello!
It’s me again, your friendly neighbourhood Hasnain (see what I did there). As I promised in the last post, I am first going to start with a little bit of history regarding the cave that Newbie, Beast and I were so thrilled to “discover”. As it turns out it’s not actually a cave, rather, a bunker that was intended to house important documents should Canada ever be threatened during the cold war times (explains the ridiculously placed wire). To me, however, it shall always remain a cave that was possibly inhabited by the first men and the children of the forest during the reign of the white walkers :’).
Now, the Heart Creek Bunker trail was fascinating, but when it comes to the actual hike, it’s pretty short! Our adventurous natures were not satisfied with that… but believe me, by the end of that day they got their fill (it’s possible that the high chance of hypothermia satisfied them). Do you wanna know what happened? I mean if you’ve reached this far, you might as well continue :D.
As soon as we reached the parking lot, we decided to begin the trail that started with a “welcome” sign (read the previous post if you are confused). The unique thing about this trail was that it had a creek running through it and the trail itself zig-zagged on top of the creek with a total of 8 or 9 bridges (they took the phrase about building bridges, not walls way to literally). After crossing the first bridge peacefully, my friend Beast had one of his brilliant ideas. Why don’t we walk on the half frozen, cracking, and risky creek instead of the proper path that any normal human in their right mind would walk on! Maybe it was the adrenaline still pumping in us from the wire in the cave that encouraged us to do exactly that.
A hike that should have taken a maximum of an hour to its end point took us two hours and 20 mins as we navigated our way through the cracking ice, jumped from rock to rock, slipped a cumulative total of 20ish times and got all of our shoes wet by stepping on ice that was not able to hold our weight. At the end of the trail, things got even more interesting! There was the sound of a waterfall coming from within the large rocks from which the creek was originating from. Now if it were summer, the water would have been too deep it would be very difficult to access it, but some frozen ice on the sides and floating logs on the water gave me another one of my brilliant ideas.
Using the floating logs on the water and the bit of ice for some “slippery” support I slowly made my way through the narrow deep part of the creek towards the noise of the waterfall. After some careful, award-deserving maneuvering, I was able to make my way to a bit of landing right before the promised waterfall and boy was it worth it! It looked like a carefully crafted waterfall fountain except nature has done a much better job than the hands of any man could. The waterfall had a crystal clear pool under it which led to another mini pool and eventually out of the large but narrow area turning into a creek.
But the story doesn’t end yet folks, I was serious about the hypothermia. As I was standing there admiring the natural beauty in front of me and thinking about how best to capture it for my newly started Instagram account, my friend Beast decided he needed a closer look at the waterfall. He slowly made his way towards it by climbing along the edges of the pool while I continuously told him that it was a dumb idea. He didn’t think so. He was wrong. As soon as he got closer to the icy parts, his grip was lost and so was he, in the neck high pool of freezing ice cold (but crystal clear) water.
Now there comes a time in every-bodies life where after an incident happens, it causes them to take a step back and learn a huge lesson from it. That time clearly didn’t come for me because as soon as Beast was out of the water a part of my brain decided I had to give it a try. I mean I am a more experienced hiker and climber right, I can totally make it? Or so I thought. Before I knew it I was also “chilling” in the waters Beast had just gotten out of. After getting out, we realized that it was -7 outside and the water on our bodies had decided to start to freeze on us (always sucks when it does that).
The clock was ticking, the ice was forming, and the hypothermia was coming, and we literately had to run to avoid it. Running our way back to the car took just 12 minutes and one major tumble in the snow by yours truly. Before we knew it, we were cruising back to Calgary in a fully heated car that had melted the ice away. Before finishing this longer than usual story, I would like to dedicate this post to Newbie who was on his first hike and had two adventures he did not expect on having. Till next time my one loyal reader :’).
Hasnain Raza Baloach 