Thursday, September 2, 2010: I woke up at 6am and tried to sleep again without success, so just went ahead and got up at 6:30. I was watching the sun slowly start to light the landscape and had the bright idea that maybe I'd go watch it come up over Louise glacier. I saw the faintest glint of pink lighting the glacier, threw on clothes and ran out to catch the sun come up. It was freezing outside: literally. Frost covered the ground, the sidewalk, the plants, everything, you could see your breath and I'm guessing it was still below zero as I was walking toward the majestic outline of the Fairmont Hotel. I got to the lake shore and there were a few hardy people out at this hour besides me taking pictures of the same pink light on the glacier (looked better in real life, the pictures disappoint me), snapped a few shots and came back to the Deer Park. We have a deck with a hot tub on top that has a nice view to the glacier, so I wondered if I'd get a better shot from there and went up to check. Moderately.
A shame, it was so pink and vivid in person. The Victoria Glacier is the one you see as white on the mountainside. It's been receding at an alarming rate, as they all have, especially fast since 1990s started. This particular glacier is accessible by a 10 mile hike, which I had intended to at least try, but I've just been sore and kinda hurting so decided I might have to save it for another time. Some friends already think I'm nuts for wanting to work so hard during a vacation... but it's not, really, and how would you get to see this cool stuff otherwise?
Priortities... I do this much walking anywhere I go, even in Europe. This is just in the backcountry with animals and bears :)
I came back to the room to find Larry stirring, and I returned the call from wildwater adventures. The woman was very nice, but the water levels were low, this was the last week they're doing any rafting and there haven't been a lot of customers to fill up each trip, so they were canceling some and trying to condense what was left. Ours was on the chopping block since not enough people were on the trip. I was actually kind of glad about that, actually. Rafting is so much fun, but it's freezing, and it's more fun when you don't mind getting soaked. It was just too cold, and this would really free up a day for us. So, I looked around to see what alternative plans i could come up with and one of the hikes I wanted most to do was a short 2.5 mile round trip called "Parker Ridge."
North of Lake Louise the park keeps going, and its northernmost border is shared with another national park twice the size of Banff: Jasper National Park. The highway north from Louise to and through Jasper is a particular road known as Icefields Parkway, which is touted as the "most beautiful highway in the world." I'm not sure I can argue. We decided to head up there, since it's a must-see here, even though it's 150 kilometers drive north. There turned out to be stopping points all over the place and we did just about every one of them. You're really into the rockies now, and there are glaciers everywhere. It was AMAZING. At the apex of this was something called the Athabasca glacier and the Columbia Ice fields. Way at the north and near the glacier is Parker Ridge. The book says, and I quote "If you do only one hike along the icefields, make it this one. It's short enough to crack in an afternoon, but leads to one of the most impressive lookouts of any of Banff's day hikes, with a grandstand view of ... the gargantuan Saskatchewan glacier." This was no exaggeration. It was the single most impressive hike we did the whole trip.
Without getting ahead of myself, there was much more on the way to Parker... We stopped in the little village square and got a breakfast wrap from the local coffee shop, along with a samosa, a cornish pasty, and a small takeaway tub of the potato salad to bring for lunch. Watered up and newly fed, we drove north. Larry's point is that we should stop at all of these little points to see what we can see, since we're never going to be here again, at least in the short future. What the heck, I can suspend my task-oriented mindset and go with the flow sometimes, so we did. Pretty much every pull out. I wasn't disappointed.
The first one along the route was The Crow Foot Glacier. The crow foot (as you can see best in the picture above, left) used to be shaped like the foot of a crow. The bottom toe, which used to be pointing inferiorly, has since melted away. It's on a peak in the distance and in its foreground is Bow Lake. The Bow Valley is basically the main valley carved out by glacial action through Banff and Jasper, we only really got an idea of that later). Bow lake has a charming little mountain resort situated on its banks, and we wandered around there for a while before moving along.
Larry
checking out the views at Bow lake, it was an amazing day, cold but sunny and
beautiful.
We continued north along Icefields Parkway, listening to Larry's funk mix and chatting amiably, still chatting about bears. The scenery never quits- after one mountain top leaves your visual field, it's replaced by another more beautiful, taller, snow- capped and maybe -probably- with another glacier. It's one gasp after another until you just feel like you can't gasp anymore...
It's common to see wildlife on this stretch of road, and the speeds are reduced in several areas where that is common, or on a common route for animals to take as they move around. The range of a bear, for example can be up to 1500 kilometers for an adult male grizzly bear, less for females, and less for black bears, but that's a huge range, so they need to move. Crossing roads is a major hazard for all animals, and the park has displays and signs about animals which have been killed because of cars on the roads. It's important to obey the speed limits, and slow down when you have to, as well as to AVOID the temptation to STOP when you see an animal at the side of the road, NEVER feed them, of course, but do not get out of the car, gape and take pictures. Move along. MOVE ALONG. Animals get habituated that way, and that obviously leads to huge problems. There are some incredibly sad stories about bears being killed by motorists in the park, along with linx, cougar, wolves, etc. Just 2 years ago a female grizzly who was being studied by park officials was hit by a train and killed in the park, with some lamentation and mourning over her loss. It's depressing that these deaths continue.
High horse aside, we kept on exploring the Icefields Parkway and came upon this spot that was marked by a stick figure with binoculars, indicating a viewpoint. It was confusing since there was a pull out, but it would have stymied most folks as the trail was partly concealed and looked like a spot where maybe water trickled through and not really a trail. We took it anyways, and followed it through this lovely little thicket of woods, full of canadian Buffalo Berry bushes which the bears in Banff love to eat. This is known as "berry season." The thicket cleared onto the most beautiful and placid lake I've seen of course with snow-capped peaks in the distance and this one high enough to have a cloud at its apex which it never seemed to be able to shake. Gorgeous.
Back in the car, we drove north and stopped along at more jaw-dropping vistas, didn't see any wildlife at the sides of the road, kept to the speed limit and made this hairpin turn up the side of a mountain and lo and behold finally came upon Parker Ridge. There were a lot of cars in the parking area, this was obviously a popular spot and we weren't the only ones with the book... the hike is 2.5 miles and I wondered why they gave it 2.5 hours to do... the hike is actually only part. Once you get up to the summit, you get to wander almost endlessly for views to the north, south, east and west over more ridges and edges so once we got up there we spent a good hour just ambling around. The wind was described as "punishing" so we had on head scarves, I finally bought a jacket since the whole trip I've been freezing cold, and I knew this was going to be ruined if I wanted to go back down right away because I was freezing... Glad I did. Wish I had bit the bullet and done it sooner. Ha. The hike is steep, and the last bit is a bit of a butt buster as you're just going straight up switchbacks for .3 miles. The whole thing is a pretty steep ascent- 1200 feet in just 1.25 miles. The top, as I said, is a huge ridge and you could spend hours up there going all over for new viewpoints. It was amazing.
There is just no way to do it justice in a tiny image like this. The wind was unbelievable, but the views brought a few tears to my eyes. The above right is the Saskatchewan glacier coming down the valley there and again, it's massive and this picture just can't possibly do it justice. We were up so high, and the peaks all around us like sentinels.
Larry was hiking up, stopped me and was peering down at the rocks on the trail. What we noticed were thousands (literally, it was amazing) of fossils embedded in the rocks used to line the trail. This area used to be a great vast ocean, teeming with life and little ancient sea creatures, and they were actually fossilized in the rocks beneath our feet. They were mesmerizing to even look at, little worms, bits of coral, these little round things that look like red blood cells, teeny little bugs... unbelievable. And wild flowers in bloom- this was alpine zone and we were above the tree line, but lichen on rocks, low lying ground cover, a few hardy plants dotting the landscape made for pretty stuff to look at on the way, as we were huffing and puffing our way along the trail.
Parker Ridge was the end-all hike, it was stellar. I loved every second of it and if you ever come to Banff, this is what you should do. Amazing.
Just around a bend were the final two things I wanted to see along the Parkway: the Columbia Icefields and the Abathasca glacier. You used to be able to walk out onto the glacier, but now there are information kiosks posting that crevasses have claimed a number of lives, and the last 3 retrieval efforts have been unsuccessful. There is a kind of sad story about a child who wandered away from his parents on the glacier, fell into a crevasse, and rescue crews tried to get him for 3 hours but alas, when they got him he was dead from hypothermia. So you can't go out on the glacier anymore, but you can get right up to the massive foot of it, and see the immensity of it. It's unreal. They have posts along the way telling you where the glacier was in 1983, again in 1993, and the greatest retreat has been since 1993-present. They built the lodge at the turn of the century right at the foot of the glacier and it's melted away to more than 2 miles away from the lodge nowadays. But in the past 20 years it's startling how exceeded it is.
To the left is the Abathasca glacier- the whole thing is glacier, except for the thin strip of gravel in the foreground, and the moraine walls to the sides. The scale is just so not possible in this picture. It's massive. Amazing. Just massive. To the right is the Columbia icefield- it's spilling down the crevasse between the two mountains, that large glacier in the center. Scale here is also just not possible, but you can just make out a few teeny specks that are cars on the road in front of it.
Sated with scenery, we drove back. Larry drove, I actually napped for about an hour while he worked the 156 kilometers to Louise. Almost there, we came upon a road jam, there was a black bear having a feast right there on the side of the road. The worthless moron (this is rated g otherwise there would be far more explicit adjectives here) in front of us parked in the middle of traffic to pull out his camera from the back seat and started snapping photos of the bear (who seemed oblivious happily munching away). Even worse, I'll never forget the face of this asian turd who actually ran across the street so he could stand 10 feet from the bear and get his picture taken with the bear. I wanted to hit him with the car. Give that bear a feast. I actually would have been rooting for the bear and hoped that worthless turd got mauled. Since Larry and I had taken the "Bear Swear" on our first day in Banff, we actually didn't stop. I snapped two shots out the window as we drove around the shithead parked in the middle of the road in front of us and kept going. I hate people. It's a shame that national parks are marred by them. Especially the idiot ones. I hope that guy gets eradicated from the gene pool and wins himself a Darwin Award. I'm rooting for the bear.
Since
we arrived at the Deer Park, Larry has been wanting to eat dinner at the restaurant
which is expensive, but sounds like the food is delicious, with a bunch of wild
and crazy game choices on there. We debated about this being the night for a
nice meal (and we do this, at least once a vacation- have a really nice meal
together before we leave, actually we do it at home in San Francisco every month
or so as well), but somehow passed it up and stopped at one of the three non-hotel
restaurants serving dinner in town and ate. I had chicken parmesan and salad,
which was bad. Larry had a burger, which is hard to screw up, so that was okay.
But forget the food in Louise folks, it's bad choices everywhere. You may just
want to pick berries in the woods yourself while you're there. Breakfast and
lunch are covered- two great places for that, but the dinner choices are either
very pricey at the lodges, or just plan bad food.
Right on the same road as the Deer Park and the Fairmont on the way to Lake Louise itself, is a turnout for Moraine Lake. It's an uber-popular spot, another key grizzly habitat, and usually crawling with people. I wanted to tick it off the list of hikes, so we pulled in and got there about 6pm when the place was clearing out for the evening (much better!), and had a walk around. The lodge there is beautiful- rooms are individual chalets and have fireplaces, which we were both drooling over on these cold Banff nights... the lake is another glacier fed lake of the usual impossible blue color, shimmering in the evening sunshine as we hiked around the well-trod path at the rim of the lake. There is a pile of rocks at the outset, scientists cannot explain where they came from or how they actually got there. Too far away and too high to be an avalanche, they're a mystery. It's known as the "Rock Pile." The best thing, however, is that you can see 10 peaks from Moraine Lake, and it was once on the back of the Canadian $20.
My
picture just doesn't get it. Bring your wide-angle lens here for sure. The scale
is amazing. The trails from the lake were all posted with signs that you had
to be in groups of 4 or more to hike on them, as there was bear activity all
over the area. Moraine is a very important habitat for sows and cubs. I don't
wonder why, it's scenic, gorgeous, and bursting with Buffalo Berry Bushes.
Back at the Deer Park, I was stretching out my sore muscles and interested in nothing more than a night at leisure, working on this web page, sitting or lounging. Maybe exerting myself to use the bathroom, but nothing more. Happily, that is exactly what happened and how my lovely day ended. I capped the lounging off with a small surgery on my foot for blisters in the heel that needed excavation, and then a trip to the roof hot tub at about 10pm to chill out for a while. I joined a very young couple named Matt and Kylie, and a big guy named Tim who was in there with his active son Aiden, probably 3 years old, who found it very fun to swim from one side of the hot tub, stand up next to one of the three of us he didn't know and say "What's your name?" before swimming back across the hot tub to Tim, his dad. This happened for each of us in there with him. The sky got nice and dark by 10pm, so I occupied myself finding the big and little dippers and Cassiopeia and got a glimpse of the actual milky way before heading back downstairs to go to bed. What a day. What a beautiful, amazing day.