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Where the GPS takes us..."The beaten path is the safest, but the traffic's terrible" September 16 Rawson Lake - a "must do"If there is one hike that ought to be considered a "must do", Rawson Lake is it. The trailhead is at the Upper Kananaskis Lake, and the return hike itself is a mere 7.5Km and only about 300m elevation gain. In other words this is an easy hike... no excuses. (In fact, Martin's a bit sick, and he managed quite well!) You could bring your out-of-town guests and everyone would enjoy the hike regardless of fitness level. And wow, the "reward" at the end... There are photos online that we looked at prior to our hike and they simply do not do this lake justice. It's stunning. It starts off walking along the Upper Kananaskis Lake, treks past a large waterfall, then the trail forks to the left toward Rawson Lake, above. It's a bit of an uphill, but not strenuous at all. And quite popular, about as many other hikers as Ptarmigan Cirque. The trail itself is your standard dirt path, very soft underfoot as the area is so mossy, so lush and green. Tree roots and several varieties of mushrooms abound. Then, after a bit, suddenly, there it is. Rawson Lake. Filled with fish, the shallower depths of the very clear water is busy with minnows. Tiny birds and little brown mice keep busy on the shore. Apparently some little critters called Pika inhabit the area as well but we did not see any. And the lake, surrounded by mountains, snow on the shores (yes, in September) is a sight to behold. The trail goes quite a distance around, to the far side of Rawson Lake, affording numerous spots of solitude and numerous amazing views... but Martin's energy began to dissipate as rapidly as the remaining daylight, so we turned to head back down the trail after only venturing a part of the way around. September 02 A cave, some caches, and bonus: a bear!Everyone who drives between Banff and Calgary unknowingly passes this cool cave. It's actually a long-forgotten Cold War bunker that was created by the Canadian gov't with the intention that it would house important legal documents if the country was ever threatened. Needless to say, the Cold War era has passed, the bunker has been abandoned, and it's just sitting there, waiting for people to explore it. So we did. Didn't hurt that there is a cache on the way to the cave, and a cache near the cave's entrance (seeing as how a GPS doesn't work all too well inside a cave...). While Martin and I have explored a cave before, this was the first cave our girls have ever explored. But before that "first", we all had another "first"... our first Bear encounter! Martin spotted it first, the bear a little ways ahead of us, running along thru the foliage. A lone Black Bear. We realised that it would probably next run across a clearing that would then have it cross our path again soon, around a couple of corners. No troubles at all with encouraging the girls to practise their "bear calls" after this point, tho, and Martin opened up his bear-spray holster and had his hand hovering, ready, like he was in a Wild West movie shoot-out. We continued on. And we were right. A couple more bends in the path and Martin again spotted the bear first. Considerably closer, in fact too close for comfort. We all froze dead in our tracks, not exactly a "safe" distance from the bear, and not wiling to risk startling it. Martin with the bear-spray now in his hand, finger on the trigger, we let out a few "bear calls" and other human-sounding hollers while remaining perfectly still, facing the bear, and waited, watching. After a few moments (which seemed more like several minutes!) the bear did turn around and walk away from us. Whew! We discussed if we should turn back and head to the car or continue along, even tho the bear was heading in the same direction as us. We decided to continue on... Martin's finger not leaving its spot on the bear-spray's trigger, and myself ready to stab a bear with my hiking pole... and our hearts racing! Suddenly every dark rock and every dark stump looked like a bear. The girls were sandwiched between us, little space between bodies so we would appear as one large mass instead of 4 juicy morsels. The entire 800m remaining to the cave, Martin and I were in a heightened "alert" mode. When we got to the cave we let some good hollers and "bear calls" out into the mouth of the cave, then went to look for the cache. Our hearts finally returned to a more normal rate so we donned warmer clothes (we could feel the cold air just pouring out of the cave!), got out our flashlights and headed in to explore. The cave was pretty simple, man-made with plenty of headroom, several dead-ends, nothing spooky, but absolutely pitch dark inside. We took a few photos, then, having seen it all and starting to get chilled in the damp and cold, we headed back outside and back down the trail... aware of the bear, but feeling much more relaxed. We doubled-back a bit on the highway, still within the area where we'd encountered the bear, to successfully FTF a cache that had just been hidden yesterday, and as we headed to cache #4 of the day, we encountered other geocachers looking for it - they'd been looking for 40-minutes by the time we arrived. We found it in under 10 minutes, shortly after they were successful. A late return back into town, but a really enjoyable day... bear and all. August 01 And on the 7th day...Today was a lazy day... no hikes at all. We had one more hike we wanted to do, but... we're spent. So instead we started the day off by heading to Lake Louise, but just as we were about to leave Field we noticed a train en route to the Spiral Tunnels. Since those tunnels are not much to look at without a train going thru, we headed straight to the viewpoint to watch. Perfect timing, it sure was neat. From there we continued on our way to Lake Louise to ride the gondola. We had a choice of an enclosed gondola or a'chairlift' and opted for the latter. Definitely much more fun, altho on the way down Martin was a little white-knuckled.
We headed back "home" for lunch, then Martin took the girls to the playground at the school, and then to the playground at the pond where they could also wade in the water, while I stayed behind to organise our belongings and get much of the packing done. By the time I was done packing the girls (and Martin) were coming in the door... and moments later Sandra (followed shortly by Martin) crashed for a nap. We've packed a few things into the car, we'll do the rest tomorrow. We're all exhausted; it's been a great vacation (good thing we're coming back to a Long Weekend! We'll need it to recover!).
Tomorrow morning we'll head back to our "real home"... we'll trade the 360-degree mountain scenery for the stark, flat prairie landscape with a mountain view only to our distant West. We'll trade the fresh mountain air for the smell of the city. We'll trade our 'rental cat' Max for our own felines... The girls have been glad to not have to worry about their cats throughout our vacation, but they do miss them. Our weather has been 100% perfect for the entire week; sunny blue skies, but definitely not too hot for hiking. And having such comfy beds to fall into each night has been quite ideal.
... I think it might be a couple of weeks before I want to go on another hike, tho... July 31 Stanley GlacierOur guide book describes Stanley Glacier as: "A slobbering glacier - a giant, frozen, Rolling Stones tongue logo". This is surprisingly accurate.
We drove over to Kootenay Ntnl. Park this morning, arriving at the Stanley Glacier trailhead late morning. Visually this was the most unique of all our hikes. This area of Kootenay Ntnl. Park was devastated by a forest fire in 2003. Or as Sandra put it "At least they don't have to worry about Mountain Pine Beetle". The trees were all charred and bare, the new lush green growth was dominated by fireweed in full bloom, and nothing (at least nothing green!) stood much taller than a couple of feet. Julia was amused by all the "baby pine trees" barely 7" tall. There were a few small areas that had been spared from the fire, and the very top portion of the trail was predominantly unharmed. The first 2/3 of the trail was really quite an easy climb, it was the final 1/3 where suddenly there was a staircase in the mountain rock and then we realised we were trekking along the moraine where it definitely became more of a challenge. But then you see that big slobbering glacial tongue, and a waterfall nearby, and of course once again, it has been worth all the effort in getting there. The wind had picked up, so we found a sheltered area near some large rocks and took a break for some lunch. Then Martin and the girls scrambled up to the base of the waterfall and enjoyed being sprayed by the icy cold mist. They were far enough away to appear as 'dots', visible mainly because Sandra was wearing a red sweater that I could pick out from the distance. In their absence I took some photos, and was visited by a Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel who poked around our packs for a little while. Black currants grow wild in that upper portion of the trail (wild strawberries are part of the new regrowth below), and there were a few varieities of butterflies to visually entertain us as well. The trek down was uneventful, the hike itself was a total of 9.3Km (plus an estimated 1Km extra for the scramble to the waterfall's base and back) and we made a couple of geocache finds on our return trip to Field. As we pulled off the highway, there was a train just arriving into Field, heading West, stopping for a while and thoroughly blocking the road "home". So we pulled-in at the Tourist Info center and the girls bailed out of the car like it was on fire, running to the playground, then pulling off their shoes and socks, rolling up their pants, and wading into the pond. A great end to a day of hiking. July 30 C & C ... Canoeing and CachingAn alarm-free morning, but we still got a fairly early start. Little kids are like that. We headed to Emerald Lake (not too far from Field) and rented a canoe. In chatting with the guy handling the rentals, we learned he was staying in Field for the summer and it sounded like he wasn't too far from where we're staying. The canoe excursion was great. For the majority of the time the water was so calm, hardly a ripple. At the far end of this very green lake we came across some Canada Geese. There are always neat animal discoveries near the far shores of lakes, it seems, and they're all too happy to have canoes quietly approach. We intentionally canoed thru several patches of reeds near the shoreline, much to the girls delight, and came close enough to a few underwater sandbars that Sandra was able to grab some muddy handfuls of the lake's bottom. A little bit after discovering the geese, the wind picked up and we had very literal waves, albeit small ones at maybe 8-10" at their worst, and a handful of raindrops hit us, but the clouds never did fully commit to raining today. Not too willing to take chances in the waves and hint of rain with the kids on board, we started to make our way back to the boathouse... Martin being the brute force to get the canoe thru the wind, and me forcing the steering. When we pulled up to the dock, a woman sitting out there said "I know you. You're from across the street!" (huh?) Then she continued. "You're staying at Helen's!" And the rentals guy we'd chatted with earlier, the woman's son, told us "We're in the house with the fish on the side." - they're literally right across the street from us. Small towns. Go fig. We entered the gift shop and our new 'reputation' had already preceeded us to the group of women working inside. Instead of a 'hello', we were greeted with: "Helen told us you went up Mt. Stephen yesterday. How was it? Did you really take the kids??" ... then they told us the story about Max, the resident cat here. It's truly his house. He has lived here thru a few owners, he simply 'comes with the place' when people sell and move. We figure there's little point in our telling Helen about our canoe ride today, she has probably already heard about it thru the proverbial grapevine.
From Emerald Lake we left Yoho and headed to Golden. We stopped to pick up some picnic goodies and then found a little picnic area at a marshland, just a little way out of the main part of town, for lunch. Sunny, warm, and close to a geocache. Yup. After lunch we hit all the geocaches in Golden. Granted there are only 4 of them, just spread out a fair ways. They were our first non-Alberta cache finds. And they also put us over 100 caches found now. Back "home" for dinner, then the girls headed out after dinner to play with the neighbourhood kids. |
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