Hiking to a summit in Banff

The previous post in this series is here..

Right before entering Banff on the return bus journey from the Glacier, our driver/guide mentions that there is still a few hours for sunset and points to teh local mountain..

"there is a trail from the trail head parking lot that takes you straight to the top of tunnel mountain. it is the highest point in Banff on this side of the river" it is a 4 mile hike and you can do it in a little over 2 hours if you are healthy! it is all a bunch of switch backs that pretty much goes straight up!" 

We googled it and found that this was like going up the last part of Rhus ridge. . after a long day, it was a toss.. but it was only 6:30PM and so we (nay, she..) decided that we will try to summit Tunnel mountain and be back down by 8:30 and have a late dinner before heading back to the hotel. 

The agreement was "no pictures till we reach the summit. That way we can go to the top while we still have energy. On the way back there can be pictures!" . Our entire hiking is group is aware of how I feel about going up without stops. This was the one part of the trip that I did not like signing up for.. hiking alone with San, where she gets all demanding and starts to insult my lack of pace etc.. I like my 20 second standing Shavasanas after every 10 minutes of hiking. This was one straight up hike with no gaps. Kept my mouth shut and kept going as fast as I could. Eventually we made it to the top and were lucky to find a dad and his toddler up there. We got pictures (so did he) and we made the walk back down.. this time I was allowed to take a few pictures. 

This worked out well because the sun was in our face at 6:30 and had gone down by the time we walked back. So the photos came out better than they would have two hours earlier. 

Another one of San's great clicks on this trip.. It is strange for me to hand my camera to her now to take pictures instead of trying to find someone in the crowd who knows how to handle a camera. All good.. (lateaa vandhaalum latestaa vandhirukkaa)

How Banff looks from the top of Tunnel Mountain summit!

We made it back in an hour and 45 minutes and were at the Indian Curry house for a nice hot masala Chai and a delicous dinner! 

We were on our way out and checking out the souvenir shops when it started pouring. We ran to our car and realized there was a parking ticket on the car! we should have used a pickup from our hotel in the morning. 

The road signs in Banff are very bad. I wanted to contest the ticket as there was no sign in the place I parked, but they don't have a way to contest. Apparently the town of Banff is starting to try and improve their parking ticket revenue in recent months. It was not this bad pre COVID per some other tourists and locals we talked to. 

We were happy after all the nature and adventure for the day.. so we just folded the ticket and planned to deal with it later and moved on! 

Here is a tip. Just park in a paid parking lot in the four blocks that comprise Banff downtown.. you are better off that way. 

Here is another tip. Hike tunnel mountain to the summit right around sunset. You get beautiful views on the way back of the entire Banff town and surrounding hills. 

Ending this post with a picture of us.. face showing this time.. from the nice red chairs almost at the summit.. Banff has these two matching red chairs in a lot of highlight places. Loved them!

Finally finished blogs of day 2!  Day 3 had a lot more stops. We had hiked 12 miles on day 2 and we did 16+ on day 3. We hiked a toal of 38 miles between Friday night 8PM to Monday 11AM.The bar keeps going up as we travel these days.

Day 3 posts, starting tomorrow.