Happy trails

7/24/2017

Good news, everyone! I was not mauled by bears or campers while sleeping in my electric fenced-in campground last night! The fence must have been effective.

I did, however, fall victim to my knee, which did not seem to appreciate yesterday’s “walk it off” tactic. But I really wanted to see some of Lake Louise’s most famous trails, all of which are somewhat mountainous. Well, I don’t have an advanced degree for nothing… I figured that if I wasn’t going to hike up the mountain, I’d just make someone else hike for me.

Enter Bobby. Bobby is gray, has big floppy ears, a strong attachment to grass and flowers, and, most importantly, four completely functional legs! Bobby is a horse.

Lake Louise has a number of horseback rides that go out every day, and I saw the perfect opportunity to stay off of my dumb limb while still not sacrificing anything. It is indeed possible to have your cake and eat it too. I opted in for a 4-hour ride to one of Lake Louise’s famous tea houses, Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House (or P6 Tea House for short), figuring that that would give me the opportunity to see most of the area without taking up my entire day (part of which I needed for a trip up to another national park).

We – myself, four other riders, and our wrangler – departed at 9 AM. Bobby and I brought up the rear.

I quickly found that Bobby was possibly smarter than I am. While riding normally and paying attention, he was just a peach. But as soon as I raised my camera, he was off to the bushes to grab some extra roughage for the road. Or he’d pretend to need to have his head down to climb a hill, and then surreptitiously grab a mouthful of grass while it was down there. Or he'd "trip" and somehow come up with some flowers. We had a bit of a fight about that and he decided that maybe he didn’t need to eat bushes quite so much. After that, it was smooth sailing.

The ride took us first through the forests adjacent to Lake Louise. Dense and shady, they held the night’s chill in mercilessly, freezing us and causing the horse’s breath to stream from their noses in white smokey tendrils. Soon we broke free into the sunlight towards the head of the lake, coming out onto the silty alluvial fan that spreads from the base of the mountains and feeds the lake. Here, milky waters streamed across a sandy bed in small rivulets and larger torrents, all draining into the brilliant blue waters of Lake Louise. As we forded the streams, our guide told us that the waters never exceeded 4*C. Our horses didn’t seem to mind.

From there it was all ascension, riding a rocky trail up towards the tea house tucked away in the mountains. Part of the trail had been swept away by an avalanche, requiring us to first cross a boulder field (treacherous) and then ride through a leftover chunk of ice and snow from the avalanche (even more treacherous). I think that all of us were glad for our sure-footed horses, and I was very glad not to be hiking!

The trail got ever rockier as we climbed massive talus piles from previous avalanches and the slow progression of glaciers, turning big rocks into smaller rocks and moving them ever downhill. Eventually we turned out of the base of the valley and climbed up the ridge a ways back into the trees, where we caught our first glimpse of the tea house! Quaint, lovely, and absolutely bristling with tourists. We stopped for 30 minutes, and in that 30 minutes I was somehow incapable of acquiring a single cup of tea. If I was British, I’m sure I would have tutted in inordinate rage. But since I’m not, I was kind of just bummed.

We headed back down the trail the way we came, but this time were rewarded the whole way with the beauty of Lake Louise instead of the majesty of the mountains. Bobby and I finagled our way to the front, which made for better picture-taking and also was better for our cumulative lack of patience. The two of us made a pretty good pair, I must say.

All too soon, our trek was ended. The day had warmed to passable, and I was pleasantly surprised to find upon dismounting that something in the ride had tweaked my knee back to normal, leaving it sore but actually workable. Nice!

I tried not to abuse this newfound freedom and instead hopped in Jane for a run up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper National Park. The Icefield Parkway is a scenic route that runs almost directly north, linking Lake Louise to Jasper via a highway filled with sweeping panoramic views of mountains, gigantic ice fields, and lots and lots of bears.

 

I imagine that this view is beyond incredible when it's sunny and clear out - but it's still quite good on an overcast day.

Check out the awesome curve in those strata!

This side of the range looks much like the Flat Irons of Boulder, CO, except much more continuous and at a much larger scale!

Yes, this is a woman standing 15 feet from a bear taking a picture of it. Why? Because people have no sense and no respect, sometimes.

Caught a black bear crossing the road! They're kind of smaller than I thought they would be - figured them for slightly smaller than grizzlies, not smaller than Great Danes. I feel like maybe I could beat one in a fight.

It takes three hours to run the whole parkway, so I didn’t stop for many attractions – the weather was clouding up anyways – but I did see a few key places, the most famous of which was the Columbia Icefield! This icefield is the largest in North America, and at one point was so large that when viewed from the top of a nearby mountain, it spread all the way across one's field of view off into the horizon, appearing to be a whole different world of ice. In recent times, climate warming has shrunk the icefield and it is now not nearly as spectacular as it once was. However, Athabasca Glacier, which is the most readily visible glacier next to the parkway, is still quite large and quite impressive. Tourists can take large six-wheel-drive buses up onto the glaciers themselves for interpretive tours. Very cool, but also very expensive... so I saved it for another day. You can see a couple of the buses on the glacier in the photos below, and hopefully that kind of gives you a point of reference for scale.

I reached Jasper National Park at last, having navigated my way past three black bears, a lot of tourists, and a lot of distractions. This is the furthest north I’ll go, I think. Past this… well, past this and you start to get into the tundra, I think. And hey, it’s actually cold now. I set up camp and made sure to have my giant fleece blanket ready to insulate me from the claws of cold that seem to infiltrate my sleeping bag if I’m not watchful. Nobody likes waking up with a cold foot in the middle of the night.

Until tomorrow morning, Kelly signing out.