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Day 3 Next >>
Our third day in the Rockies began a bit later than the previous two as the comfort of our sleeping bags outweighed our desire to pack up camp by a big stretch. We finally got out of bed around 9, and used the flush toilets for the last time (this campground had flush toilets and running water at a sink, as well as normal taps throughout the campground). Much as how we enjoy "roughing it", having a sink to brush your teeth at is nice sometimes.
After breakfast we broke down the camp and managed to get everything back into the car, though not nearly as neatly packed as when we had driven out here initially. We said goodbye under our breaths, or something not as nice as goodbye, to the partiers here and took off north up the valley.
Before we had gone too far we came across some wildlife, a black bear on the side of the road eating dandelions. This one was a few feet high at the shoulder, so not too young and not too old. We of course stopped to look and maybe take a picture, as did others, unfortunately I had my self timer on the camera turned on, so when I pressed the shutter button the camera did nothing. A moment of panic "What the heck, is my camera broken?" then the shutter opened. By that time the bear had gone across the road and into the woods, so no bear pictures for me yet.
We continued on, saw an elk on the side of the road eating grass (got a picture of that one at least!), and hit a few more scenic pullout areas. One of them had an iron bridge that, from the signs at the entrance, looked to be a hike-in entrance to Mount Assinaboia provincial park (just to the east of where we were). It also had an interpretive trail through a recent forest fire burnt area, I guess back in 2003 when we had our big fires in the Okanagan, the National parks were engulfed in flames as well. A lot of the middle the upper section of Kootenay National Park was burnt pretty bad, which became more evident the further up we went.
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This was a gorge we stopped at, which was our first encounter here with a waterfall or chute of any kind. The name escapes me, but it was great to feel that spray on your face, standing on the bridge above the water carved chasm. Once again this was the Kootenay River, seems the road just follows it all the way up into Banff!
On from there our next major stop was the Ochre Paint
Pots. The soil in this area is abnormally rich in iron, so most of the ground is
a deep reddish yellow colour.)
It was a short walk in, and they even had a wheelchair accessible trail, though
it was a little steep in some areas. Thoughts of wheelchairs spiraling out of
control crossed my mind...also on this trail was suspension bridge number 2.
These seem popular here, same design as the one at McLeod Meadows campground,
and (shockingly enough) crossing the same river!
On the other side of the bridge here we saw what looked to be green onions that someone had placed on the ground. Thinking maybe this would be a great addition to our nightly meals, we were tempted to take them, but just incase opted against it. We saw more and more of them, not pulled out like the first few but actually growing wild there. Wow, we thought, that's neat! Only once we returned and were looking through a Rocky Mountain vegetation book did we find out that there are two varieties of wild green onions, and these ones sounded like the "very poisonous" ones. Whew...glad we erred on the side of caution there!
A little further in, interpretive signs explained why the soil is coloured like it is, and how indigenous people in the 1800's would use the soil to make a few shades of dye for face painting and such. Then the white man came in, and the soil was harvested in great quantities, shipped back to Calgary via the CPR and used as a pigment base for paint. They stopped somewhere around 1920 when Kootenay National Park was actually established, and a lot of their equipment still remains here (shovels, horse drawn troughs and buckets), as well as the last few mounds of soil that never made it onto the trains. The whole place was formed by the accumulation of iron oxide around the outlets of three cold mineral springs further up the trail. Here's a couple pictures of Kathy and I in front of one of the pools. The greenish colour in the pools is caused by a mixture of fresh creek water that comes in from the other side, and the mineral water itself.
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The whole place was formed by the accumulation of iron oxide around the outlets of three cold mineral springs further up the trail. Here's a couple pictures of Kathy and I in front of one of the pools. The greenish colour in the pools is caused by a mixture of fresh creek water that comes in from the other side, and the mineral water itself.
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Back to the car we went, and headed further north-east through the park. A few trails looked very interesting, including one to the foot of the Stanley glacier, however at 5km's one way we just didn't have that sort of time today. Another that we will go back for is a trail to Floe Lake, 12+ km's one way with tent sites at the lake, it's a high mountain lake with a glacier perched atop a headwall on the lake, which drops sections of ice every now and then causing mini icebergs to float around on it. What amazed us about the area here was the amount of long distance hikes in the northern Kootenay NP region. There was a few 100km one way hikes and plenty of 20-50km ones that run north into Banff. Very neat.
Another point of interest was a sign saying we had just crossed the Continental Divide, separating the Pacific and Atlantic watersheds. Amazing...everything from this point EAST winds up flowing into the Atlantic ocean, with the Pacific being fed by an area just a little smaller than BC. Sure enough, the next river we saw was going the opposite way...did a bit of a double take there. Past that we encountered two other signs, one welcoming us to Alberta, and one welcoming us to Banff National Park. We said goodbye to BC and to Kootenay National Park, and carried on, opting to take the Bow Valley Parkway instead of the Trans Canada to Lake Loise.
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There were a couple points of interest along this narrow and slower road, like
Castle Mountain (see picture at left) and a couple nice little streams, (see
picture at right) but in retrospect, not worth the drive. It was much
slower, a fair majority of the drive was down a perfectly straight 2-lane road
lined with row upon row of identical looking lodge pole pine. In addition to the
visual monotony, it was getting warmer here, the sun was out and we were a lot
lower down than previous days, suddenly our four layers of clothing covered up
with thick down, was feeling rather toasty. Finally though we saw signs pointing
to Lake Loise, where I'd been planning on gassing up again. However the signage
failed us here completely, who'd think that there would be just one exit into
Lake Louise and only one sign pointing the way. Our final plan for the day was
to camp in Yoho National Park, back in BC, near Field. So we started down that
way figuring maybe a turnoff to Lake Loise would show itself.
After seeing the "Check fuel, no service for another
80km's" sign, we realized we'd totally missed Lake Loise. Oh well, fuel was
still ok, we'd be coming back this way tomorrow anyways. We made a stop in at a
National Historic Site near the BC/Alberta border: The Spiral Tunnels. This was
where originally the CPR would
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pass
over the Rockies and as it came down into the lower parts of the BC foothills,
it would have a grade of over 4.5%, which is twice what the normal maximum grade
for a railway would be. This part was known as "The Big Hill" where it would be
a common occurrence for trains to careen down here completely out of control.
So, they took an idea from Swiss tunnel makers (if I remember correctly) and
carved out two huge looping tunnels into opposite mountain sides that would
gently slope down and reduce the grade to somewhere in the 3% range. On long
trains you can see the engines appear from the lower tunnels while the rear cars
of the train are still entering the upper tunnels. Interesting stop, partly for
the multitude of nationalities on the tour busses parked there.
Another 5 km's or so down into BC and we saw the signs for three campsites in Yoho National Park that all cluster around the tiny town of Field. Monarch, Kicking Horse and Takakaw Falls. The last was closed as it's very high up and the road was still snowed in. Monarch turned out to be more of a picnic area than a campground, though it did have a huge rock wall behind it that interested us. A sign in the parking lot said to look for mountain goats on the wall, sure enough we look and immediately spot one making it's way across the top of a steep scree slope with nimble ease. We decided we'd try Kicking Horse instead, it sounded nicer from the description, more "campground like", if you will. A few hundred meters further up the road a sign says that campground is closed as well due to frozen water pipes. Hmm, that's not good. That leaves us with Monarch, Hoodoo Creek (which is about 80 kilometers further into BC, and on the very western edge of the park) or venture back into Banff.
We opted for the latter. It was 3:00pm by this time, so we drove back as fast as we could to Lake Loise. Found that one marked exit into the "town" itself, and stopped off at the Info Center. This was one neat looking place, we should have stayed there a bit longer to check it out, but we were in a bit of a rush to find a campsite for the night. The lady there advised there was a 200+ tent site a few minutes away, she called them and said there's only about 10 spots left and there is an electric fence around the entire campground, as "there are bears in the area". As enjoyable and relaxing as that sounded, we asked for more options. She said there were a few campgrounds near the town of Banff, much further south, or there was Mosquito Creek which is a "primitive" site 35km's north on the Icefields Parkway.
We weighed the options carefully, on one hand we had the icky southern and more populated region of Banff NP where we found nothing really of interest, and where the campsite would cost us $17-$23 per night. On the other hand, we had a bit of an unknown traditional campground to the north, on a highway that you need a park pass to even use, so much fewer people there, at a campsite that would cost $13 per night. Sold!
Ironically, when we had driven past the turnoff for
Jasper via the Icefields Parkway earlier that day, I had mentioned to Kathy that
I'd sure like to take that route someday. Little did we knew we'd be taking it
only a few hours later! We passed through a control point where they check your
park pass, and from there on we hardly saw any cars on the road. The mountains
got closer and closer as we climbed higher and higher, then halfway to the
campground we hit what seemed like a patch of rain, but was actually snow. The
vegetation on the side of the road was different as well, more rock and hard
lichens than grasses.)
The sign for Mosquito Creek campground came just after a sign for the Mosquito Creek Hostel (closed for the "winter" season), so we gathered those two were very close together. We took the first turnoff and came upon a large empty, chewed up area. Bulldozer tread marks all over the ground and nothing even marginally resembling a campground anywhere in sight. Did they scrap the campground and no one told the park staff or something (picture at left)? We were at a bit of a loss for what to do...drove back out to the highway, and saw after a bridge, not 200 feet further down the road, there was another entrance. Whew, that's where the entrance was. It was cold out, a bit windy but still sunny , and there were 2 foot high snow banks in the main parking lot here. This may be a chilly day...
Took a tour of the sites, the road around that ran
through this little campground had huge potholes all over it, filled either with
snow or muddy melt water, half the sites had)
at least some snow in them, and a few were completely covered so that only an RV
could use it. Surprisingly there were at least 15 sites in use, which was about
half of the total sites. We ended up choosing one much larger than we needed,
and had it been busier we'd not have taken that one away from the group campers
or RV'ers. But it was such a nice sunny spot, had a little patch of soft ground
between 6 or 7 good sized trees where we could put the tent, and had a little
path behind it leading to the river.
The river itself was so nice and peaceful, about 30 feet wide and very shallow in most areas, with the clear water we've come to expect here letting you see every water washed stone. There were mountains looming in all directions except in the directions the highway followed, likely the only path through them. On their wood supply box there was a "Bear In Area" warning sign, but since the only bears I've seen this trip have been so peaceful looking munching on their dandelions, my natural intense fear of them was diminished. Kathy has never had much bear phobia, so she'd probably be fine even if one raided our camp.
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Set
up camp as soon as we could, already it was 5:30 and we'd not eaten anything
yet. The mammoth tarp again went over our tent, nestled in the soft ground
between the trees. Foolish, actually, since this was a depression in the land
where we'd set it up, and while perfect for stringing a tarp over the tent and
making for a nice comfortable base to sleep on, if it had rained hard we would
have been floating. Our meal tonight consisted of ravioli, though I think we had
something else as well, but I can't remember now. While pulling some food out we
noticed that the ice packs in our cooler had turned warm and our fridge food was
bordering on spoiling if left much longer, time to improvise! We pulled out two
bread bags, filled them with snow from the edge of our campsite, tied it shut
and stuffed them in the cooler! Practically MacGyver style...
It was certainly a different camping experience here, the fires that we had managed to get nice and hot and burning in a fairly short amount of time in McLeod Meadows, were nearly impossible to light here even though the wood was dryer. Our camp stove as well required 10 or so extra pumps to get proper pressure, and still sputtered, not giving out full heat. We could only attribute this to higher altitude and just enough less oxygen that it hampered combustion. We were, in fact, only about 200 feet below the tree line.
After dishes were done we took a stroll down to the river again, this time with a camera. We saw a big white cloud moving in, fast, through the trees across the way...looked like it was carrying moisture...then it looked like it was depositing moisture, moving closer and closer, very fast. Then right in front of us all of a sudden, snow flakes...wow, how pretty...and within 10 seconds we were coated in snow with a fierce wind plastering it to our sides. We ran back to camp, where at least the trees broke some of the wind, the snow fell nice and peacefully. It was like Christmas almost, and those were some thick flakes that were collecting on our tarp. In 15 minutes or so it was over and a gorgeous looking evening ensued. With the few people within earshot of us tonight, the comfort of our sleeping bags, and the sound of the creek in the distance this was probably our best sleep of the trip.
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