You'd have thought we'd have learnt our lesson about checking that trails were open so hard to believe we set off again to walk a trail that turned out to be closed. Jill had looked on the trail closed list for Banff National Park but sadly this wasn't really very helpful as the Galatea Creek Trail to Lillian Lake walk we planned was in Kananaskis Country. We did explore a little along this trail, a path going in the other direction to the one we planned was open, and it was informative to see at close hand the devastation that had been caused by the waters and the huge amount of large rocks brought downstream by the water. We do have some photos but they maybe don't convey the immensity of the damage. We did now have a much better understanding of why the trails were still closed.

So into Kananaskis Village for coffee and a rethink. Coffee turned into coffee and cheesecake for Dave, cheesecake that he declared the best he'd ever eaten - yes, just about a week after he'd eaten Vancouver's best cheesecake and he's found a better one! The village isn't what we'd recognise as a village; just two hotels, a large parking lot (that's a car park: see how we're slipping into American English?) and a small shop clustered round a courtyard with a fountain. The hotel that supplied the cheesecake also displayed lists of trail statuses - closed, open with warnings, open - so we planned a different walk over coffee.

Feeling refreshed we set off to walk the Mt. Allan Centennial Trail that was 'open with warnings of some flood damage'. The trail set off on a ski trail from a ski centre but soon turned uphill onto a hiking trail that was indeed flood damaged as the photos do show, particularly the one of Dave in a deep trench that had been a path. We climbed, and climbed through the trees stopping for lunch on a meadow ledge before continuing to climb towards the tree-line where we met a large group of UK squaddies running downhill on a training exercise. Think they were as happy to have a few moments breather as we were. Eventually we emerged from the trees on to high alpine meadows but the path remained as steep as ever, if anything getting steeper with no sight of our summit goal. It was also getting increasingly windy, and a bit late given our slow start to the walk, so although we were both feeling a lot fitter than earlier in the week we agreed on a judicious stop for Jill with Dave leaving his rucksack for a final push on to the highest point we could see. This turned out to be wise as the highest point we could see revealed more of the same, with no end to the climb in sight. Jill's resting spot provided amazing views over spectacular mountains, and we felt quite exhilarated by our climb and the views.

We saw a dark pink variety of Indian Paintbrush, a plant we'd seen frequently in all the alpine meadows but not this colour before. Looked up later we learned that Indian Paintbrush is a collective name for many different species of various colours: red, pinks, yellow and white, and that the plant is parasitic attaching its roots to other plants to gain some nutrients.

After juice and snacks we started our descent, stopping for a team photo that ended up being taken by a friendly fellow walker with a most obedient dog. Dave says Poodle but Jill thinks Labradoodle, whichever, it lay down beside us to have its photo taken! The descent was steep and in places with very loose footing but Jill was discovering that all the enforced steep descents were paying off and found that she was able to make faster, unassisted progress than had previously been the case: developing springy rather than wobbly ankles maybe? We'd had a great day out despite our poor planning!