Exploring The Canadian Wilderness

Banff and Jasper

John, Miguel, and I chose Banff and Jasper National Parks in Canada as the destination for our 2005 annual trip. We all flew in, although we saw plates from California, Virginia, and even Florida, evidence of the journeys people had taken. Located right next to each other along with Yoho and Kootenay National Parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the parks are enormous - Banff along is twice the size of Yosemite, and Jasper three times, and within their boundaries lie some of the most majestic scenery in the world.

Beginning in Calgary

The trip got off to a rocky start, as ours usually do. John missed his connection and in the meantime Miguel and I picked up the rental car and went on a jaunt around Calgary. Within an hour we had cracked the windshield thanks to a rock kicked up by a pickup as we explored a dirt road.

When we picked up John we also picked up Natalee, a girl our age from Ottawa who claimed a friend was supposed to pick her up but hadn't shown. We offered her a ride to her friend's house but quickly realized she was completely out of it. She kept avoiding our questions about where to go, so she went to Banff with us, which seemed fine with her. By the time we arrived in Banff she was irritating us with the lack of sensical conversation, and we seemed to be irritating her with our questions about what her story was, so we parted ways and went off to our hostel.

Banff to Jasper

On July 31st we took the Trans-Canadian Highway north to Jasper, with a detour on the Bow Valley Parkway. The route travels through a valley with lush forest and dramatic peaks on both sides. While stopped at a viewpoint looking at Storm Mountain and Castle Mountain, a 4km long seemingly impregnable fortress of rock, John spotted two black bears, the first of four bears we would see, crossing the highway. They disappeared quickly into the woods. We suspect it may have been a mother and cub. We also stopped to see the Waputik Range and Hector Lake, where a sneaky raven made off with Miguel's lunch.

As we neared Jasper we stopped for a relatively short hike up to Parker Ridge and spotted a glacier on the other side. For some reason there was a washing machine at the top of the ridge, meaning someone hauled it up perhaps 200m of elevation. Their purposes remain a mystery. We didn't bother to see if it worked.

We passed by Athabasca Glacier, sourced from the enormous Columbia Icefield and popular among tourists due to a road leading right up to it. An interesting fact is that the Columbia Icefield is the hydrographic apex of North America, meaning water flows out from there to the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans. Each year more snow falls on the icefield than melts, and below about 30m the snow compacts and crystallizes into ice. The only escape for it is to flow out in frozen rivers - glaciers - which move at a rate of a few meters per year. We stopped at Athabasca Falls, a beautiful waterfall that falls into a deep, narrow canyon. Logs stuck in the rock well above the water demonstrated how much water flows through the falls during spring melting.

Once in the town of Jasper Miguel and I went out to take some photos and spotted a mother elk with her calf. A line of cars by the side of the road was almost always a good indication there was some sort of animal to be seen. The elk were completely indifferent to our presence.

Jasper

On Aug. 1 we climbed Mt. Wilcox, listed in Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies as "moderate, with mild exposure." We joked plenty on the way up that exposure had to do with John's pants at the summit, but as I learned near the peak, what it really means is crossing several ledges along a windy ridge with a mortal fall just inches away. Despite the difficult ascent we reached the summit and enjoyed truly spectacular views in every direction. Clouds shortly began moving in and forced us back down.

In the evening we went out with some girls from the hostel on a pub crawl. We met Sophie, a Brazilian working at the hostel who organized the evening, Katie and Angie, two Brits taking a horseback trip around Canada, and Xenia, also from Brazil and working as an au pair in Seattle.

The next day we went on a fairly easy hike along Watchtower Trail. The hike took us through a forest moist from rain and covered in moss and ferns. At the end we reached a picturesque meadow promised in our guidebook (the Moon guidebook, highly recommended) and discovered it was soggy with mud and swarming with mosquitos. Thwarted at the meadow, we turned back.

The Mountain Hut

On Aug. 3 we began the hike to our next destination, the Wates-Gibson Hut in Jasper National Park. The hut is a 20km hike from any road, which makes it truly possible to feel alone with nature. Although the hut has room for 30, we were alone. The hut was something in between camping and a hotel. It had propane for cooking, a fireplace for warmth, and a lake of runoff from snow and glaciers with a waterfall for showering - brisk! A step outside gave a view of mountains all around us.

We decided the day we arrived to take an easy day the next day. As it turned out this turned into trying to climb a mountain, and I instead defected from the group and walked over to Amethyst Lakes, which offered a fantastic view of the Ramparts, a series of nearly vertical peaks 1000m high, and one of the famous features of the park. They are only accessible by hiking, which made seeing them seem more special. Miguel and John attempted Mt. Bennington, and made impressive progress, but were ultimately turned away. We decided again to make the next day an easy one.

The next attempt at an easy day turned out to be a hike lasting all day up the Eremite Valley, continuing on past the trail towards Angle Peak and Eremite Glacier. Beyond the trail began huge rock moraines left by the glacier as it receeded, and we had a lot of fun scrambling around. We found pools colored red from algae, "watermelon snow" - snow colored pink from bacteria, and John spotted a trilobyte fossil.

We reached the glacier, a dramatic flow of ice and rock spreading out from the peaks near its source. At the bottom of the glacier water flowed downhill in little rivers which combined to become larger and larger. Much of the water flowed from under the glacier - the pressure of the ice creates a film of water and this water finds its way to the terminus of the glacier. The water was a light gray, colored with the rock flour the glacier had ground up.

Exhausted from a day of scrambling up and down rock hills, and with a sprained ankle I managed to obtain on the rocks, we decided once again to take the next day off. In the morning however we decided instead to push back to the city of Jasper a day early and spend our day off driving around rather than sitting trapped by mosquitos in the hut. So in our tired state, with me hobbling, we hiked the 20km back to the car. We found a motel, probably a lucky opportunity since it was Saturday night during the high season, and enjoyed hot showers and soft beds - things a couple days of tough exertion in the wild taught us not to take for granted.

Back to Banff

On Aug. 7 we finally got our rest day. We journeyed south back to Banff and along the way played tourists, never venturing more than maybe ten minutes from the car. We saw Maligne Lake and Medicine Lake, so named by the natives. It fills up each spring and then drains mysteriously through an underground stream. The natives thought it was the magic of spirits performing this feat - "Big Medicine." Next to Medicine Lake we saw the sheer limestone cliffs of the Colin Range. They were a good example of the geological variety of the Canadian Rockies, which were formed as North America collided with several islands. Some of the islands were vaulted overhead and some squeezed underneath, yielding a wide variety of rock types and shapes. We stopped at Maligne Canyon, 50m deep but narrow enough for squirrels to jump across. Near the end of the day we saw Peyto Lake and Moraine Lake and the Ten Peaks which rise out of Moraine Lake and enclose it.

John and Miguel went up Mt. Rundle on the outskirts of Banff the next day, a simple hike but requiring 1600m of elevation gain. My ankle was still in poor shape so I took the car to Yoho National Park and took some pictures of Takkakaw Waterfall. The water falls 400m and hits a ledge near the top which sprays it out horizontally. Sheets of water collide with rocks jutting out on the way down and vaporize, turning the falls into a spray of mist by the bottom.

On our last day of hiking we all climbed one last mountain, Mt. Fairview by Lake Louise. The trail was an ascent the whole way, with the only respites being areas less steep than others. The top was amazing though. We could see up and down Bow Valley, the imposing Mt. Temple, and the Ten Peaks, with Lake Louise at the base. A helicopter flew by far below us and the crowds at Lake Louise were too small to see. I left my Scientific American magazine in my backpack by accident, and since John shared carrying the pack, I justified bringing it by reading it for a bit on the summit.

The last day was dreary as we headed back to Calgary. Clouds had moved in and the weather turned cold, so our escape was timely. This was by far the most physically demanding of all the trips we've taken, but I think we all agreed one of the most scenic as well. As one person wrote in the mountain hut register, pain is temporary, but the mountains are forever.