We woke up happy to be camping at Marble Canyon Campground in Kootenay National Park. There had been so much uncertainty with the wildfire situation in summer of 2024 that we weren't sure if we would have to cancel the trip entirely. After arriving by plane to Calgary August 3rd, we drove out to Kootenay to car camp before our planned Rockwall reservation began. With the time change we were up early, and was able to start on the trail a full hour earlier than we had scheduled at 8AM. We crossed the bridge over the Vermillion River and passed by the iron rich paint pots before leaving what most tourists visit on this trail. We headed up through forested trail and through an old avalanche path full of fireweed. We began shouting "Day-O" and "Yee Yee You" to ward off any grizzlies that might be in the area.
We passed by a junction and then continued on the forested trail until it opened up to a silty blue mountain creek where there was a bridge crossing. Upon further investigation, a campsite called Helmet-Ochre with a few tent pads and an outhouse are also found here. Looking at our GPS units and watches, we had almost travelled half the anticipated 15km distance to our campsite for the night at Helmet Falls. When we took a snack break at the campsite, Glenn realized that his bear spray was missing. He had slung it through the chest strap of his backpack and on a previous water break it has slid off the strap. He and our group member Marc walked back 10 minutes onto the trail to find it and then returned empty handed. As they were gone, I realized my sunglasses were missing off my head on top of my hat. Uncharacteristically, we had both lost important items in the first 6.6km. When Glenn returned empty handed, we decided to walk quickly back onto the trail and walk 30 mins tops back to see if we could retrieve both lost items. My sunglasses were worth $300, and I wear them everyday for work and they are essential to me for preventing migraines. At a blistering pace, we walked back and met up with a couple about 13 minutes into our walk back who had the bear spray in their hands and returned it to us. They had also picked up my sunglasses and put them on a stump another 15 minutes back. Off Glenn and I went practically running down the trail looking at every stump compared to the other shielding the glasses on our walk by. We asked two other groups if they had seen them but they hadn't. We turned around defeated, and on our way back found them on the stump and realized why we had missed them in the first place. All in all we had delayed the group's progress by 2 hours, something unanticipated but on this day we had lots of wiggle room to fit it in having started an hour early, having stable weather, and anticipating an early afternoon campsite arrival. If I had a firm deadline on that day (ie to meet a shuttle bus, etc) I might have had to leave the items behind. In the backcountry mistakes can be deadly, and it isn't something I make a habit of doing. All in all we paid the price for our mistakes by adding an extra 8km to our original 15km hike distance.
Continuing on from Helmet-Ochre, the trail ascends through the forest and follows a creek to a wobbly suspension bridge. It's best to cross one at a time here, Not long after the crossing the trail passes through more forest and a junction to Goodsir Pass. We passed some fresh bear scat on the trail and arrived at the Helmet Creek Warden cabin which is the sign that you have made it to the Helmet Falls campground. We could barely see the falls in the distance due to the smokey skies here. We arrived at 3PM to find that we were the second group to arrive. There must have been close to 20 campsites here to chose from. We set up camp and finally had our lunch and figured out where the dining area was located complete with bear-proof food lockers. We ate our freeze dried meals around 6PM and turned in early to bed. Our bodies were subconsciously still on Ontario time. Overnight showers came with some lightning in the distance. Although it made everything wet, the smoke in the skies disappeared!
Wake up time was around 6:20AM. We weren't the first hikers up and gone but we were one of the first. The tent flies were wet along with the ground and vegetation. Conversation with other campers at breakfast surrounded the overnight distant storm and if we had seen the lightning or heard the light rain. Conversations ceased when we realized the smokey haze was gone and we had a clear view of the 1100 foot Helmet falls in the distance. Wow what a view! We oooed and awed over the falls. After packing up, we were the first group to head out onto the trail that morning headed towards Tumbling Creek. The first 500m of trail is in bushy alder which completely soaked Glenn's feet. We took the side trail to the base of Helmet Falls (now that we could see it) and bumped into a family of marmots whistling in a rock pile at the base of the falls. After taking a few photos, we returned on the same trail we had come in on adding 1km to our total for the day (a worthwhile detour). On the way out the group met a territorial ptarmigan who launched an attack at us as we scuttled by her. She was a legit 'angry bird'.
Back on the main trail, we followed the switchbacking dirt path up to a couple of more viewpoints of Helmet falls until we climbed out of that drainage and into another one along Rockwall Peak. The trail was bordered by an abundance of wildflowers and once headed downhill, the trail was easy to pound out another mile. We hit a silty lake and took a lunch break at the bridge here. Almost immediately after the lake you cross another rickety bridge over a creek and enter another forested uphill section cresting another hill into a wide open alpine valley. To our right almost the entire day were tall rock faces that invited me to wonder if anyone had climbed or traversed their ridges. As we entered the valley, trees became very sparse and alpine flowers bloomed. We ran into a single woman and her dog on the trail and found out she was a national park bear biologist. We had a good chat with her and identified the names of the the wildflowers we were curious about. She told us what the bears were eating and asked us to take her photo and vice versa. We continued further and passed a ranger cabin in the distance and passed another junction before entering into a section of forest that looked like an avalanche had ripped through it before descending down to Tumbling Creek campground.
What we didn't know about this campground is that there are an A and B section to this site. Both areas are side by side with tent platforms and their separate kitchen areas and storage lockers. We set up camp in the sun and were able to dry out our tent from the night before despite being surrounded by several biting flies (sand flies?) and horse flies. A quick change of clothes to our long pants and long sleeve hooded shirts solved the problem. The Tumbling creek is silty, so we found a side creek that was clear to filter water from. We took a walk through the B campsite and down to a bridge across the creek where there was a tight canyon and thundering rapid to check out. We wandered back to our site and set up camp and had a little rest. We met at 5:30PM for dinner, and minutes after our last bite that the dark clouds rolled in and we had to retreat to our tents for a 90 minute long intense thunderstorm. The entire time we were on the Rockwall there were several groups of trail runners out trying to run this trail in a day. We met one female solo runner fairly late in the day at Tumbling and I wonder where she was when that intense storm hit as she wasn't moving quickly when we saw her. The trail runners all run in the same direction from Floe to Paint Pots as it it less elevation but has less views. It was 14.5km to Helmet Campground, and I was doubtful she had made it that far.
Day 3 was to be our biggest challenge physically: a 19km hike with 4000 feet of ascent over two passes and 3500' of descent. We were on the trail again early and crossed to the other side of the creek passing a lingering snow patch left over from winter. We climbed the winding trail up to the tall glaciated spires above. The trail climbs to some excellent viewpoints of the glaciers and peaks before crossing a pass and descending a steep loose gravel trail in the drainage towards the Numa campsite. After the steep descent you cross a creek and enter into an alder tunnel. In the morning the tunnel was shaded and wet but in the afternoon I assume it would be very hot. It is also excellent bear habit so we were constantly yelling out to make any furry creatures aware of our presence. After the tunnel section, you pass through a huge blueberry section of trail before finally reaching a dead end. Turn right and within a minute you are in Numa campsite. We chose to stop at the tables and benches for lunch here, 8km into our day.
To be honest, Numa was my least favourite looking campsite and I was glad we were moving on from it. The campsite were surrounded by tall bushes and the views were minimal. We crossed the bridge kept going straight through onto a gradual ramp through forest sometimes sandwiched between two creeks. We kept walking up the ramps catching glimpses of some falls in the distance. We passed by two more falls (one up close and one from a distance) that were bursting at the seems from the rain over the past 2 nights. The vegetation and ground was quite moist - a good sign after the dry season the west was having. The trail climbs up towards Numa Pass through the forest in shade switching back and forth for quite some time. It finally starts to level off as the trees thin out and we took a long break after a long ascent. Once above the treeline, a stunning view of peaks appear at your back and as you climb the scree slope, Numa peak towers over you on the left. Once in the scree saddle a minute after you have drank in the view of the valley behind you see what is ahead of you...Floe!
Descending down into to Floe Lake is pure joy with a long bench of trail to follow that is flagged but more alpine flowers, view points of Floe Lake and a lovely dirt ramp of trail through forest down to the campsite. "The" campsite at Floe next to the lake was taken, so we had to settle for one away from the lake. We set up camp and aired our wet tent and walked back to the lake to spend our time there. One of our group members went swimming but others including myself dipped our feet in which felt great after a long 7.5 hour day in boots. After eating by the lake, the sun set behind the high walls of the peaks and so we made our way up to the tents to rest our tired bodies. A nasty long thunderstorm rolled in the middle of the night and lasted for 2 hours. The thunder cracked across the sky and it sounded like it hit and echoed off the walls across the lake. I counted the number of seconds between lightning strikes and thunder and it varied between 4 and 11 seconds. Trying to sleep at this highest elevation camp at 6600', was almost impossible. The storm ended with a large amount of heavy rain until it sounded different on the fly of the tent. I turned on my headlamp to find pea-sized hail showering the tent. Luckily the Durston Xmid 2 was up for the challenge but the rain that followed created a river under our tent caused by a less-than-deal designed tent pad that caused slight moisture to creep up through the tent floor.
Breakfast in the morning of Day 4 was a surprise treat. The calm waters of Floe Lake created perfect reflections of the surrounding forest and mountains and was quite picturesque. We ate breakfast on the shores of the lake where we had eaten dinner the night before and took several photos of the stunning views in front of us. We tore down the wet tent one last time and packed up to hike the 10.5km downhill out to the highway. The trail drops quite quickly steeply and enters an old burn zone where there are charred logs to crawl over and under and lot of fireweed growing all around. As we descended the temperature rose from the cool morning we woke up to at Floe. Several parties we crossed paths with were going up to Floe - some for the day and some overnight. The consensus through the conversations is that we were lucky to have scored a campsite at Floe and had a reservation to do a preferred itinerary of the entire Rockwall trail. Thanks to Deb for getting us a reservation. I felt grateful for being able to complete this spectacular trail and even more grateful that the weather and wildfire situation cooperated to allow us to experience this. Highly recommended!
Hike Grand Totals:
Distance: ~60km
Elevation gain:~8500 ft