Aint no mountain high enough....

Upper Kananaskis Lake ( Rawson sits within the crater that you see to the left)

Having an inflatable SUP is great. It's easy to store, you don't need roof racks, and you can get it on as standard luggage when flying. Oh yeah and the kids and friends won't put a ding in it. But is that really the limit of the goodness of the inflatable SUP? I felt that I wasn't really exploiting the benefits of the transportability of her so decided to find more ways to use my inflatable friend. No Scotty, not like that!
Today was a great day to hike to an otherwise inaccessible lake and SUP there.
On the way back from Banff to Calgary, there is an area that has a few lakes, two of the main ones are upper and lower Kananaskis Lakes. Just north and altitudinally up from Upper Kananaskis is Rawson Lake. The write ups list it as a picturesque classic alpine lake, a mere 3.9km hike away from UKL. Oh yeah, and that 3.9km they suggest will take you about 3 hours. This in part is due to the 320m climb. Well they say 320m, it felt like about 920! and most of that in the first part. My first suggestion that it might be tough came from a friendly gent that I met along the way whilst working out how to cross the river with the bridge out...

When I told him where I was off to with my SUP on my back he said " Wow, that's courageous... you must be really strong!" Ok, so a comment like that is bound to set off some alarm bells, but I trekked on. Having completed the 1.2km walk in to the track, I was all smiles...

Then it began. I was concerned at first that the Canadians were a little too direct in their approach here. There were no switchbacks, it was just straight up the mountain. Eventually some switchbacks came, and with good reason. It got steeper! I began passing people (probably those that take 3 hours) and was about half way before the shirt had to come off.

It was getting pretty bloody hot lugging the SUP and me up a mountain. Fortunately time spent with a good friend and adventurer Kyle Williams on his A2K venture taught me that all mountains have a top, and if you take enough steps you will arrive there eventually. I continued to pass people, which is a terrible habit that I put down to training with people like Kev Laws. Oh yeah, and a bit of ego, If there is someone in front of you, you must overtake them. Once you have overtaken them, you cannot under any circumstances let them catch you... Who came up with that stupid idea??? All the runners and cyclists and swimmers will understand. At least it was an aesthetically pleasing hike and the Canadians worked it well in that the last 500m or so was quite flat and enjoyable. Arriving at Rawson Lake, it was worth every step..

Yep, that's snow!!

I have to say, I was a little disappointed to find someone else on the water when I got there, but I got over that pretty quickly. They were fishing in a dodgy dinghy and not on a SUP. I'm claiming first SUP on Rawson until proven otherwise.

Paddle done and it was time to hike back down. Obviously substantially easier than hiking up, so upon hitting the trail at the bottom I decided that one lake for the day wasn't enough and continued along the edge of Upper Kananaskis Lake away from the parking area. It was during this leg that my OCD kicked in. It took me 30 min to get back to the start of the climb, and 50min to get to the top including the first part, so if I went for another 40min, that would round out 2 hours neat of hiking.

and along the way, an answer to the age of question of what bears do in the woods..

 I also knew that the wind was blowing toward the carpark, so the further I got, the better down winder I got to paddle back to the car :) Yeah, great logic, this has someone as stupid as me doing a little light jogging from time to time to get the most out of my next 40min. The 40min mark came up and no access to the water, but soon found it within another 5 or so. Time came to get back on some water and claim my second lake for the day.

 Finding a couple of things on the map that I wanted to see further I headed away from the carpark first then turned around and had fun on a reasonable although not howling down winder home.

 A swim at the end was a perfect way to rinse my sweat soaked body and cool down before hitting the road back to Calgary.
The feeling of claiming a lake that most SUPers will never get to, after paddling some beautiful but well paddled ones in the past few days was a great feeling. A little scared that I may want to find lakes that are even less accessible to paddle...
An epic day and feeling absolutely flogged.