Happy Birthday KEN!!

 The morning started out with someone knocking at our door at 730am, waking us up for breakfast. We had been warned that this would happen, so while it wasn't a surprise it was not a welcome sound. However, if we wanted breakfast at 8am, we had to haul ourselves out of bed and mosey on down to the chow cabin. Luckily, fashion isn't very important at Shadow Lakes Lodge, so it wasn't a lot of work getting presentable.

We grabbed the requisite coffee, and helped ourselves to the granola, hot cereal and fresh fruit salad. Ken and I were both quite happy with that selection, when Mia and team started bringing out freshly baked blueberry muffins, sausage, eggs and corn fritters with chipotle yogurt sauce. Ok, could have definitely skipped the cereal. After we rolled ourselves out and got ready for our hike to Ball Pass.   

Ball Pass is a 5 mile each way hike, and is described as moderate in difficulty except for the last 1.5 miles which ends up at the Continental Divide on the border of British Columbia, which was rated as difficult. So, we headed out about 10am, hiking past Shadow Lake, rivers, creeks, mud pits and rocks. We got to the hard part and the change in terrain was obvious. The first part was steep, but doable (heck we hauled bikes up worse yesterday).  

 Then we hit skree...better known to us non-hikers as lots of rocks on a steep slope. Wikipedia describes it as:  Scree is a collection of broken rock fragments at the base of crags, mountain cliffs, volcanoes or valley shoulders that has accumulated through periodic rockfall from adjacent cliff faces.  And it looked a lot more difficult than what we had done so far. But, we are not to be deterred...as we are almost at the top. We found a small patch of snow that had to be crossed, then it started to snow ! However,even though it was about 3/4 way up, I chickened out as the rocks were loose and I was more concerned about getting down, than going up.

Ken, however continued up as it was his birthday, and dammit he was going to make it to the top. I crab walked my way back down to a safe large rock, while he kept scrambling up the mountain. He ended up at the top, and celebrated by peeing into BC while standing in Alberta. It is the little things in life!

I was happy to see him heading back down (and not tumbling down) and we had a snack on my safe rock. After a small break, we headed back down to the cabins. While the trail was not steep, there were many rocks and it required our full attention to not trip and fall.  We were both exhausted when we got back and were sooooo glad to see the lodge at 4pm.  

We got a quick snack (it was tea time) and then relaxed before hitting the shower, which was surprisingly acceptable (for being community). While I was in the shower, Ken enjoyed happy hour with our dinner mates from the previous night. Then dinner, which consisted of mushroom soup, poached chicken and tzatziki sauce, pasta, grilled zucchini and salad. The staff surprised Ken with a carrot birthday cake and a sparkler, while singing Happy Birthday!   

After dinner, we headed to the porch with our new friends for more conversation and wine. I was totally wiped out, so didn't last long, but Ken continued to celebrate for a bit longer. A nice ending to a fun birthday!