Geraldine Lakes

There are four of them, we only hiked to the second one and enjoyed the scenery, but it was way too much hike for us. The hiking time to the second lake was listed as 5 hours, but it took us 9. It was listed as a "challenging" hike in one of the trail books and "difficult" in the other. Our real tip off should have been that Tim Jensen, our favorite trail guide author (The Best Day Hikes in the Canadian Rockies), says in his introduction, "owing to the great difficulty in following this beautiful trail we did not include it in the top list. To hike here you will need advanced route-finding skills." We did get off the trail once, and recovery took us about an hour, but we weren't exactly "lost". We could see where we were, but were following a trail up a ravine that was almost vertical because we missed the cairn (actually there wasn't one, you were just suppose to see the faint line of a trail across the rocks and boulders) to the real trail. But, what has really bummed us is that the Fitbit went black about 6 hours into the hike so the last three hours are not counted in today's step count and the elevation we climbed isn't accurate in the stairs count.

However, the lakes were beautiful, and waterfalls impressive and the surrounding mountain peaks spectacular.

The trail began through the trees and ascended moderately to Geraldine Creek and on to the first Geraldine Lake. As we approached the lake we could see smoke and it turned out that a young couple had camped there overnight and they were enjoying the lake and a fire. It was a little scary, seeing the smoke, because of the major fire that is burning in Maligne Canyon just a few miles away.

Just a few yards down the trail we came upon a bear track. After finding that indication of a possible near-by bruin, we began to talk loudly.

Beautiful jade-colored water of first Geraldine Lake.

As we travelled along the right side of the lake we could see the first waterfall (white patch center right).

The going began to get a little tougher as we encountered our first obstacle, the large waterfall at the end of the lake.

Typical of the boulder fields that we had to cross, with no trail. Almost a quarter of the hike was scrambling over bare, sometimes slippery rock.

The cascade of the waterfall was beautiful, as was...

the upper part of the falls. 

The trail along the lake was either rocks or roots, or...

a combination of both.

There were also swarming mosquitos, seen here trapped in a spider's web. Fortunately we had our mosquito netting for our faces and necks and were wearing gloves because it was cold. Isn't hiking fun!!

After we ascended about 350 feet up the side of the first falls we came out of some trees to see another photogenic waterfall. What we didn't fully realize at the time is that the trail is a scramble up  the side of this falls on the tan patch of loose rock that you can see just to the left of the falls (center left in the picture).

Part way up the trail we took this picture of the falls.

When we finally reached the pass (on the right trail) we took this picture looking back down the valley at the first Geraldine Lake and the run-off of the falls to a small tarn.

After more than 5 1/2 hours of challenging trails, we arrived at second Geralding Lake where we ate our well-deserved lunch and turned around and came home.