Earnslaw Burn is a relatively short dead end valley that wasn’t listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook I had but I stumbled upon it while reading the Moir’s Guide for the area, which is a series of New Zealand trail guidebooks that cover pretty much every trail and route in the country. Despite being surrounded by the popular Rees-Dart Track and close to the world famous Routeburn Track, the hike into Earnslaw Burn doesn’t seem to be well known to tourists. I hope it stays that way; I had the whole place to myself for 2 epic days which were some of the best of my life. It’s an easy and fairly short hike up the valley through pleasant beech forest until you reach grassy flats in a deep alpine valley draped with big glaciers with large waterfalls dropping off sheer cliff faces. It reminds me of Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland, which is another of my favourite places. There are no camping facilities in the valley but plenty of great places to wild camp. It’s also possible to hike up to the surrounding ridges to gain views of the surrounding mountains. Unfortunately, I had to rush back because I had a permit to hike the Routeburn Track, so I didn’t have time to get up on the ridges…next time!
On the way back I ran into Craig and Kathy Copeland, who are the authors of the awesome guidebook “Don’t Waste Your Time in the Canadian Rockies”. As we were chatting, they seemed vaguely familiar but it finally clicked when they said they were from Canmore. It was really cool to meet them, I have always admired their lifestyle.
Here is a link to their website:
http://www.hikingcamping.com/authors.php
