The Jacques Lake Trail in Jasper National Park Alberta Canada is roughly a 24km out and back hike. This is a high priority trail for Parks Canada so it is regularly maintained and is generally considered to be easy. It was for these reasons that we chose this for an early season training overnight hike. We had just purchased some new gear and wanted to test it out. We also needed a good mountain getaway.

The week of our trip, Jasper received a sudden and heavy snowfall. There was more than 30cm! This snow fall was followed by a few days of heavy rains. Together, the two storms caused a lot of damage. Trees fell, roads and trails were impassable and some roads were even washed away. The sun came out and the temperatures quickly warmed up melting the snow almost as fast as it had accumulated.

We knew that there would still be snow and lots of snow melt on the backcountry trails in the park and that some trees would have come down. In fact, Parks Canada rated pretty much ever single trail in the park as being in poor condition. That didn't stop us though, we chose to continue with our plans as the trail was open after all. We just made sure that we were prepared for whatever might come our way.