If possible, it’s always a treat to take vacation time in mid-September. It’s always much easier to book camping permits mid-week and enjoy quieter trails and campgrounds this way. This year we decided to head into the Banff National Park backcountry and explore the area around Egypt Lake.

Our timing was quite good in terms of catching the larch trees turning yellow. This particular one was along Pharaoh Creek.

Always stop and smell the lichen.

On our second day of this trip we made camp at Egypt Lake, and headed into British Columbia for an afternoon hike up to Talc/Natalko Lake (not pictured).

We had quite a mix of weather on this trip. This meant cold and wet mornings, but often some nice displays of sunlight between the clouds.

Making breakfast near Egypt Lake, before heading off to explore the Pharaoh and Black Rock Lakes.

Signpost from the pre-metric era:

Another lovely break in the weather.

Lots of large larch to look at.

Cliffs above Pharaoh Lake.

Pharaoh (or Black Rock?) Lake.

From Pharaoh and Black Rock Lakes we descended back to Egypt Lake, grabbed our overnight packs and tackled quite a steep ascent up to Scarab and Mummy Lakes.

There is a spectacular waterfall that tumbles from Scarab Lake down to Egypt Lake. This is just a tiny section of the stream above it:

From Scarab Lake we headed up towards Whistling Pass, which lived up to it’s name with lots of marmots whistling about our passage through their home territory.

Laura was pleased about reaching the high point of the trip (2300m).

We spent our last night at Ball Pass junction, and were rewarded with stunning views in the early morning.

SW face of the Mount Ball massif.

The early morning air was crisp, and chilly!

The final leg of our trip brought us past Shadow Lake, where we had commenced our loop from, and we returned to our car along Redearth Creek. Classically, we had the very best weather of the whole trip on the last day!