Yesterday I drove all the way up to Strathcona Provincial Park’s Forbidden Plateau, as I wanted to hike the Helen McKenzie loop trail.
This was my first spring visit to the park so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The forecast was great: 18 degrees Celsius and a slight overcast, pretty much ideal for a long hike.
What I didn’t expect to see was snow still covering much of the trail. In some places the snow had even collapsed the boardwalk underneath.
Once I got to the Helen McKenzie loop, there was too much snow to see where the trail was going. I explored the snowy forest for a little while, but after finding more bear tracks than trail clues I decided to turn around. I’ve only hiked the Helen McKenzie loop once before so instead of taking the risk, I opted to hike the much shorter and more familiar Paradise Meadows loop instead:
Even this easy loop had its tricky parts, as it was frequently hard to see where the boardwalk was…
Pacific Sander 
Only tracks and no bear?🙂
No bears in sight, but the tracks were fresh, they looked like a small female bear’s to me.