Things That Go Buzz In The Night

 

I've mentioned Tweedsmuir Provincial Park already....this was where we saw the Grizzly sow and her cubs, featured here. But I'd like to tell you a bit more about this unique place, which to me was one of the more interesting parts of the trip.

Tweedsmuir Park is slightly off the beaten track for most travellers. Before becoming Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, the area was explored by Alexander Mackenzie in 1793 and was originally inhabited by the Bella Coola and Chilcotin Indians. We spent two days here, based at the Eagle's Nest Resort at Anahim Lake.

Anahim Lake

Anahim Lake

We stayed in what would politely be termed "rustic accomodation"... log cabins with communal showers a fair walk from our cabin and separate outhouses for the "long-drop" toilets. This made for some potentially exciting midnight toilet trips....although the thought of running into a Grizzly en route was enough to make me renally retentive! At least we had electricity in our cabin - as the only couple on the trip we were lucky enough to get the "honeymoon cottage", so deemed because it had a double bed instead of the cot-like beds of some of the other cabins - others had to rely on paraffin lamps and torches.

Our log cabin

The Outhouse

In stark contrast to these slightly spartan facilities, the resort restaurant provided fine dining under crystal chandeliers....linen cloths, silverware, cutlery rests and a selection of fine wines. I suppose one should get one's priorities right!

We went on a half-day hike on the Rainbow Trail, that led us up through a scorched forest....

Burnt tree in scorched forest

And through an alpine meadow.....

To view the Rainbow Ridge...

 

Rainbow Ridge

Both evenings were spent relaxing by the open fire, spotting fish jumping from the lake and watching the sun slowly set....

Idyllic...were it not for the plague of tens upon thousands of mosquitoes buzzing around our ears! Tweedsmuir is renowned for its heavy mosquito density, and we were there for the worst possible time of it! Miraculously, I escaped bite-free....not sure if that's thanks to the potent bug repellent, or if I have an immunity built up from growing up in the tropics, repelling malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Either way, I'm grateful....others in the group weren't so lucky, and left Tweedsmuir covered in itchy welts and bumps!

Beautiful Blue

On a sweltering hot and humid day like today, I'm dreaming of being beside the cool blues, greens and turquoises of the glacial lakes in the Canadian Rockies.

Lake Kinney, in the shadow of Mount Robson

The beautiful colours of the lakes arise from suspended rock flour...billions of tiny particles of rock generated by glacier erosion and dumped into the lakes by meltwater streams. The rock flour floats near the water’s surface, making the lakes appear both opaque and bright at the same time. It's the rock flour’s ability to absorb and reflect certain wavelengths of light that confers the lakes' unique colours: the particles absorb or eliminate much of the blue light, but reflect some blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The water itself eliminates the reds, oranges and yellows, leaving mostly green and some blue light. And that light is what’s available to bounce off the rock flour and out to our eyes. More rock flour means that more blue is absorbed, which results in a greener lake.

Lake Peyto

More of Lake Peyto

Lake Moraine

Lake Louise

Fairmont Chateau Louise on Lake Louise

I thought I would expire walking up the steep path to get that last view of Chateau Louise. Beautiful hotel and what a setting!  I had an amazingly delicious and expensive cheescake on the terrace overlooking the lake after the killer hike.

The last lake in this series is Lake Minnewanka....yes, indeed!....in Banff National Park. Another lung-bursting effort to get to this view, but worth it nonetheless...

Ice Ice Baby!

Given my great love of all freezing cold-related activities - I’m never happier when I’m chilled to the bone, icicles hanging from my eyelashes, fingers burning with slow onset of frostbite on top of a Norwegian mountain - is it any wonder I leapt at the chance to go ice-walking on the Athabasca Glacier in Canada? I think my capacity to remember pain is limited...must be the memory loss induced by numerous head injuries incurred during activities that seemed like a good idea at the time, like skiing and paragliding. Luckily, the glacier walking was an accident-free experience, and really quite pleasant on the whole, albeit a tad nippy and windy.

Athabasca Glacier, Columbia Icefield

Putting our lives into the hands (or rather footprints) of our knowledgeable glacier guide, we crossed rocky terrain - once covered by ice, but now exposed as the glacier is receding by approximately 20 m per year - to reach the edge of the glacier.

Snow at the leading edge of the glacier

We first walked over the rather muddy looking snow left behind from the past winter, before stepping onto the ice at the toe of the glacier. Although the guide assured us that the ice is at least 200 m thick at it's shallowest point, I had to first get over my irrational fear that it would give way under my weight at any moment! The surface of the ice is melting to slush, with pools of water and blue ice beneath.
 
 

Our guide led us slowly up the glacier, pointing out millwells, which are the glacier's natural plumbing (funneling glacier melt water beneath the ice), and crevasses, like this one....

 

 

 

 

He then terrified enthralled us with a detailed account of "Death By Falling Into A Glacier Crevass", which goes along the chilling lines of this..... first, you fall until your body wedges in the crevass, then your body heat starts to melt the ice around you and you fall even further...this carries on until hypothermia sets in, and finally your body starts to freeze to the walls of the crevass....nice!

 

 

 

On the glacier

 

The surface of the glacier was quite slippy and a bit scary to walk over in the steeper parts (at least for a pathetic explorer like me!). All the time we were walking up the glacier, I was worrying about coming back down again, and having visions of toppling over, shooting down the icefield at great speed on my backside and only stopping when I encountered a rock, or worse, fell into a crevass. I consoled myself that my sizeable rear would probably save me, as I would become wedged close enough to the surface that rescue would be possible, provided they reached me in good time!

 

 

 

 

By now, the weather was turning a bit nasty (it wasn't exactly tropical to begin with) and standing on a glacier in the wind and rain with hidden dangers all around, I started questioning my sanity...and why I hadn't opted for the bus ride instead....

 

Terra bus...the transport of choice for the sensible glacier explorer

 
To my enormous relief, the guide's boss later caught us up bearing a rucksack of crampons....and thus kitted out, I had the confidence to begin the downwards walk. B didn't fare so well...we were one pair of crampons short for the group, so he went without, but was competely unperturbed as always (Macho, macho man! I've got to be a macho man!)

 

 

All Other Canadian Creatures, Great and Small

Apart from the thrill of seeing several bears in Canada, I did come across an assortment of other interesting animals. In no particular order, here are a few of them....

Prairie dog

Golden-mantled ground squirrel

Black squirrel

Tiger slug

Rocky Mountain sheep

Elk

Racoon

Friendly cat

Overly friendly dog

Horses

More horses, plus humans

Unfortunately, I didn't get a photograph of a moose - although we caught glimpses of them, they are fairly elusive and don't hang around to pose!

The Bear Necessities

Probably the greatest highlight of my Canadian adventure was the chance to watch bears in their natural habitat. I apologise in advance for the quality of the photos and video clips in the following post, but bear in mind (pun intended!) that I only have a hand-held Canon compact "point-n-shoot" camera with 5x optical zoom and built-in video recorder...not exactly top of the range wildlife photography equipment!

Early in the trip, we spent four days on Vancouver Island, including two at the west coast resort of Ucluelet (named after the Nuu-Chah-Nulth word meaning "safe harbour"). The area is part of Clayoquot Sound, a vast temperate rainforest region of extensive beaches and deep fjord inlets.

Here, we had the chance to go coastal bear watching in a zodiac vessel, much like this one...

All kitted out in our comfy, coverall flotation suits, we set off at exhilarating speed, only to pause shortly afterwards to observe basking seals and then bald headed eagles. Our guide sped us out towards the fjord inlets, gradually slowing the vessel and eventually switching down the engine and rowing us closer to the shoreline.

We drifted slowly and silently along, all eyes trained on the beach...watching, waiting and hoping to glimpse the black bears, known to emerge from the rainforests and onto the beaches to forage for food. Our patience soon paid off! We spotted a large black bear busily beachcombing....

Ursus americanus

Within a few minutes, another black bear came into view from the other side of the beach, this one with her two cubs in tow. Mommy Bear set about showing her cubs how to forage, casually turning over huge rocks with one swoop of her great paw, looking for crabs, clams and barnacles. The kids were fast learners...

Suddenly, the two adult bears became aware of each other and with a few sharp grunts, Mommy Bear sent her cubs up a nearby tree for safety. That's when we noticed two more cubs up a neighbouring tree....obviously the offspring of the first bear! So we now had two sets of twin cubs up trees and two sows having a bit of a stand-off on the beach, and the drama unfolding before our "bear" eyes (OK, enough of the corny puns!).

Eventually, satisfied that there was no imminent danger, Mommy Bear #2 called her cubs back down and retreated into the forest, leaving the first bear on the scene to finish up her seafood platter in peace. We returned to Tofino harbour, thrilled to have seen black bears in such close proximity.

Now we were eager to spot Grizzlies....and we didn't have to wait too long. A couple of days later, we were lucky enough to see a Mommy Grizzly with her two cubs, happily eating the grass and flowers on the side of the road running through Tweedsmuir Provincial Park...

 

We spotted two more black bears in Tweedsmuir, and caught glimpses of another couple on the way to Jasper National Park.

And this one in the Town of Jasper....

Jasper the Bear - the Town of Jasper's mascot, created by James Simpkins for Macleans Magazine in 1948

And finally, we were treated to some bear, or rather bare spotting of a whole different type on Vancouver's Sunset Beach, on our very first day of the trip....

Nude cyclists in the World Naked Bike Ride - a protest against oil dependency

I'm Back...

....perhaps in body but certainly not in spirit! I think I've left my soul somewhere in the Rockies - it stubbornly refused to leave the unworldly beauty and solitude of such a place, merely to return to the mundane and ordinary that awaits me back home.

To sum up my visit to Canada in one word.....SPECTACULAR!  I will be posting more on my trip soon, but I still have 2,972 photographs and video clips to process first...even so, I doubt they will do justice to the magnificent landscapes that I was privileged to view. I'm thinking of preparing a series of themed posts, rather than a day-to-day trip report as that could get a bit tedious :-)

In the meantime, I'll leave you with a taster of my Top Five Sights and Experiences:

1. Watching Black and Grizzly bears at close (but safe) range...and not getting eaten by one!

Grizzly cub in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park

2. Ice-walking on the Athabasca Glacier, of the Columbia Icefields Parkway.

Ice, ice, baby!

3. Gazing upon the milky blue and turquoise shades of Lakes Peyto, Kinney, Moraine and Louise.

Lake Peyto - that's not PhotoShop, it really is that colour!

4. Standing in silent forests of towering giant Douglas-fir, Red Cedar and Grand fir trees.

Berg Lake Trail

5. Feeling dwarfed by the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

Highest peak in the Rockies (3954m)