We needed a bit of a shakedown prior to doing the Brazeau Loop, so we opted to do the portion of the Berg Lake trail that had been reopened. According to signage at the visitor centre, the full trail will not be open until 2025.

Gear

Gear List

Key changes to our gear for this stage of hiking with a toddler:

• No more framed hiking carrier. Instead, we brought an SSC toddler carrier and I used my usual backpack.
• We left the travel crib behind!
• Swapped out the Morrison Outdoors Little Mo for a youth quilt which should hopefully fit for several years.
• No more diapers! Toothless is no longer using diapers. We did still bring pullups for overnight just in case, but at home, Toothless is dry overnight.

Otherwise no significant changes.

Day 1

Mileage: 7 km

We were car camping at the nearby Robson Meadows and thankfully we seemed to have sorted out our toddler sleep troubles. Toothless slept through the night and woke with the sun around 6 a.m. Everyone ate breakfast (chia pudding prepared overnight) and then we packed up the car and drove the 15 minutes to the trailhead arriving at a pretty impressive 8am considering we had to pack up the car camping tent and wrangle a toddler.

The trail is wide which we find Toothless doesn’t do too well on; he tends to wander back and forth and get distracted on wide trails whereas he makes good progress on singletrack where there is one clear path forward. So we slowly made our way up the trail until we encountered a bench at the 1km marker and Toothless insisted it was snack time.

After a snack, we kept hiking another 2km before Toothless decided he wanted up in the carrier. He promptly fell asleep and then we quickly did the remaining 4km to Kinney Lake. During this time, I remembered I had discovered a fatal flaw in my shorts on our previous trip. They have a mysterious hang-loop on the front with a D-ring that hits exactly underneath my hipbelt. It is not super noticeable when I’m just carrying my pack, but when I’m carrying Toothless and my pack, his additional weight ends up digging the D-ring into my hipbone which needless to say is not comfortable and by the end of the 4km, led me to alter my gait which led to hip pain that would continue to bug me on the Brazeau Loop and even once we got home.

After our bedtime disasters from our trip earlier in the year, we tried to keep Toothless up as late as reasonable which was a bit of a struggle given he napped in the morning instead of his usual time in the afternoon. Despite that, bedtime was as smooth as one can expect with a toddler. I think the previous couple of nights of car camping on the drive-up helped get him used to the routine of sleeping in a tent.

Day 2

Mileage: 7 km

Toothless woke with the sun once again, so it was another early start even though we really didn’t need to. Shortly after getting going, Toothless asked Kyle to carry him; unfortunately, Kyle’s back had been bothering him, so he wasn’t able to take Toothless. This resulted in some very dramatic wailing and flailing and ended with me strapping a very uncooperative toddler into the carrier so we could continue making progress down the trail.

We skipped around the lakeside trail at the end of Kinney Lake on our way in, so opted to follow it on our way out. It offers top-notch views of the lake and Mount Robson. Definitely don’t skip past it!

Toothless managed to walk the whole way from the end of the lake to the trailhead on his own!

Unsurprisingly, almost as soon as we started driving away from the trailhead, he fell asleep. We grabbed lunch at Jasper Brewing and then continued down the Icefields Parkway to our camp for the night. We stayed at the Icefields Tent campground. I always forget how nice the frontcountry facilities are at National Parks. It is a tent-only campground, so no oversized sites with hardpacked gravel, just a parking spot, tent pad, picnic table and fire ring (with firewood included). Even a couple cook shelters with wood stoves for cold nights. The walk-in sites are actually located close to the entrance and convenient for folks who are walking/biking in.

Overall, it was a perfect little shakedown and we didn’t have any issues or things that didn’t work as intended. I cut off the stupid D-ring from my shorts and we tucked ourselves into bed aiming for an early start as we had a short drive to the trailhead to start on the Brazeau Loop tomorrow.