District Nine

7/23/2017

Another day of hiking for Gimpy-Legged Kelly! Joy. I awoke with my knee hollering already, having apparently taken offense at me sleeping with it bent or something. Dumb thing.

I decided that I would employ the classic “walk it off” strategy to fix it. It should be noted in advance that I found out that that particular strategy does not actually work with knee injuries. But hey, it was worth a shot and better than sitting around on my butt, which we all know is something that I’m not very good at for extended periods of time.

Fortunately, the day dawned much clearer and I was able to glimpse slices of stunning blue amidst large fluffy clouds. The Tunnel Mountain Trail seemed like a good candidate, being not too strenuous but still mountainous enough to afford me a feeling of usefulness. I don’t like trails that just kind of go in a circle with no effort to them. I’d much rather go upwards, and downwards, and around things, even if it does kind of ruin previously injured body parts.

The top of the trail looks out over the valley that houses the golf course (what kind of national park has a golf course, honestly), giving the mountains in the background enough breather space to show their true grandeur without them looming over you too closely. If you go to the other side of the trail, you can also view Banff (the town) and its respective valley. I was fascinated by the play of light across the mountains – one of the simple side effects of a partially cloudy day, but an effect compounded by the sheer scale of the view you’re observing. As very small people in a very large world, usually we can’t see the shadow of a cloud as it affects us, but rather just know that it’s sunny or cloudy out. It’s therefore interesting to me to see the entire shape of a cloud’s shadow, and to know that anyone beneath it would just see a cloudy day until edging out from under that shadow.

A lady at the top of the trail told me about a young handsome fellow “full of muscles, and so tan” who was manning the river rafts down in the river wending its way around the golf course. I decided that probably I didn’t need to go on a river tour if the biggest call was the tour guide. Not like I want to see any golf courses, anyways, so I instead opted to head up north towards Lake Louise where the weather was clearing even more. My first stop was Johnston Canyon and Falls, a little easy hike to a series of scenic waterfalls.

The problem with little easy scenic hikes is that they are FULL of people. And my god, the people. This trail was not designed to accommodate so many, as a lot of it is a narrow metal walkway on the side of the canyon. It does make effective hiking difficult, and makes it even more difficult to go downwards with that weird crabbed step that I’ve devised to limit my knee’s power over me.

Regardless, the falls were beautiful! The canyon is narrow and twisted, with interesting erosional features developed over time by the river attempting to escape its prison. Even now the water at the bottom of the canyon boils angrily at times, seeking an easier way out. For the majority of the run of the river though, the water is now calm, milky blue in color and burbling along its chosen path without too much fuss. Occasionally, it finds a softer spot in the rock, carved out into a cliff by thousands of years of erosion, and cascades over in a cool blue spray. I bet that this trail is lovely when it’s not full of people. But I must confess, when there’s a lot of people around… you shouldn’t go here. It’s just irritating.

Interesting travertine deposit swallowing up some nicely laminated earlier sed rocks

I carried on up the scenic highway 1A, eventually looping back onto the main road in time to cross under some of Banff’s most fascinating sights: the wildlife crossings!

Check out the vegetation on top of these tunnels!

To some people, these may just look like tunnels covered with grass to make them more attractive. But they’re actually critical for linking fragmented habitat for animals, especially those that are migratory, and are thus essential to the preservation of the ecosystem of the park! The large highway that runs through Banff cannot be crossed by wildlife, being both extremely dangerous (duh, YOU try to cross 6 lanes of traffic without getting T-boned) and also fenced off for protection (duh, YOU try not to hit an elk crossing the road as you’re going 60 mph). While it’s nice that you don’t have to worry about hitting an elk as you drive up the road, the problem then is that the elk can’t find a way to move east to west, or west to east, without detouring at least twenty miles north or south. So, if the best grazing lands are in the east and the best watering holes are in the west, well, you’re just SOL. This is the effect of habitat fragmentation.

Banff National Park has worked to mitigate this issue by building large crossings over the highway for the animals to use. They’re nice and wide, appropriately vegetated, and hopefully not camped too heavily by predators, so wildlife can use them to cross back and forth across the highway. This particular design is really interesting and I can’t recall seeing it implemented anywhere else in my travels. Of course, in most US national parks, the thought of having more than a two-lane road is just horrifying, and everyone stops to take pictures of any wildlife in the road so maybe they are not as necessary for our parks. I can still see that they would be highly useful to link habitat across any major road anywhere, though. I hope the idea catches on and is implemented in the future in a lot of places to help reduce the impact of roads on wildlife.

I reached Lake Louise, the northern hub of Banff National Park, by mid-afternoon. Up here, the prime things to see are the lakes: Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. I was informed by rangers that Moraine Lake would be nigh inaccessible due to the high volume of traffic. As one of the most-photographed and most accessible areas of Banff, pretty much everyone goes up there. And, since I am included in ‘everyone’, I went up there too. Fortunately I found parking and was able to clamber up to the rock pile that dams the base of the lake. The kind of nice thing about this pile of rocks is that you have to cross a bunch of floating logs to get to it, which dissuades a lot of tourists (especially those wearing high heels or flip flops, which is something I’ve never been able to fathom anyways) and limits the number of people up there with you. Once up there, the views are spectacular.

 

But first, here is a picture of the exact moment that a guy realizes that I'm in the car as he takes a picture with his wife standing in front of it... LOL.

Somehow, this barrier is sufficient to prevent 80% of people from experiencing one of the most beautiful views in the park...

Moraine Lake doesn’t really have a trail associated with it beyond what connects it to the parking lot a few hundred feet away. In that respect, it’s disappointing. When I visit places, I like to get out and walk for quite a while. But it must be nice for those with disabilities (or people who are just plain tired) to be able to see this kind of view. And I guess it was nice for me too, since I may now fall into the “people with disabilities” category, if injuries count.

Anyways, after soaking in the sights and watching tourists for a while, I headed back down into Lake Louise (the town) to set up camp. Imagine my surprise when I found that my campground was surrounded entirely by a large electric fence! What kind of place needs to guard its campers so stringently? Places with lots of bears, apparently. I was suspicious and suddenly wondered if the Hunger Games were about to begin.

I’m pleased to report that in the time that it took me to pitch the tent, make dinner, get showered up, and get into my sleeping bag, I was neither assaulted by bears nor my fellow campers. Substantially less drama than I imagined I would encounter when surrounded by a fence like this, honestly. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow. Until then… Kelly signing out.