Locals we met in Lake Louise recommended the Lake Bourgeau hike. The combination of a cloudy day and some altitude gain made it pretty chilly, about 45F, but it was a great one for animals. We saw ptarmigan, mountain goats, and some really pesky gold mantled ground squirrels. They are adorable and people feed them then they get annoying as they climb on you and get into your stuff. Still, they were cute.
I guess it is the British influence!? They look like soft English muffins. I will let you know how they are.
We moved on to Banffin Banff National Park. It’s a resort town with big RV Park style camping. It’s cold and rainy so we are doing chores.
Laundry-that place was a ZOO. It was packed with nowhere to sit. People were on the floor and steps. One attendant was running around like a chicken with her head cut off making change, taking in and actually washing wash-and-fold jobs. Thankfully Kent stayed with the wash and I escaped out to the visitors’ center. Just glad it’s done.
Study says, “groups of four”.
Banff National Park is the first Canadian nat’l park to implement mandatory grouping of hikers on the trails with high bear interaction risk. They have data that says it’s better for the bears and people to have fewer, tight groups than a continuous stream of individuals or smaller groups. It sounded like kind of a hassle for us but worked out great. We paired up with some folks from Vancouver and hiked out to Consolation Lakes from Morraine Lake. We never saw a bear, of course!
We did see deer, an American dipper, and a sandpiper (and I thought they
were just shore birds…wrong).
Animal overpasses and underpasses
The Trans-Canadian highway is becoming a four lane highway and has 8ft fence all along. They have included lots of landscaped bridges and huge culverts to allow animals to get to the other side. It’s amazing to see and they have some really cool motion triggered photography of animals actually using them. This is a huge research
field….they need to track individuals to be sure there is enough movement to avoid in-breeding and to assure access to food.
Molly, looking for a big-animal vet/animal career?
Bears hit by trains….why on the tracks?
Dah………lots of grain spillage from grain hauler cars. It lures them onto the tracks. They are still working on what to do about that. The parks and Provincial Gov’t and
Canadian Pacific Railroad have a big symposium in September to address bear deaths on the tracks. Pretty unique topic I’d say.
We also learned why Moose have so much trouble with trains and automobiles. In nature they are an apex animal so their instinct when confronted is to stand their ground or charge into the fray. When they charge a train or auto they loose. Oops!
Canada Rte 93 is a recreational traffic only highway that runs north –south through Banff and Jasper national Parks. Everywhere you look are glaciers, waterfalls, braided rivers formed from surging meltflow, and 9000ft+ mountain peaks. There are nine icefields in the peaks along this route. The valley it runs in is a major wildlife corridor for grizzly bear, black bear, mountain goats, big horned sheep, and even wolves. The views were wonderful.
And
Two different sows with cubs plus one lone bear. They were all black bears and two sightings caused significant bearjams on the highway.
The naturalists really encourage people not to stop but it is soooooo hard. Current philosophy is that stopping, even if you stay in the car, habituates them to people and traffic and increases mortality rate. We stopped just long enough for pictures but at least we stayed in the car. We still have work to do honing our best wildlife preservation etiquette.
And
He just had short horns not the big fancy curved ones yet
but still pretty cool to see.
And
The Columbia Icefield lies above route 93 and numerous
fingers of ice slip over the mountain cuts as glaciers. The Athabasca
is close enough to go out on it. The toe of it really looks like dirt rather than ice since it has so much ground rock mixed it but cracks, fast running icy meltwater, and occasional calving off of sections remind you that it is really still glacier. It was just one of those things we had to do when we had the chance.
Five foot high, six strand electric fence surrounds the tenters’ campground here at Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta. Yeap, this is bear country.
As we were checking in, they let us know that there were black bears in camp this morning. We haven’t seen them all day though. They are pretty militant about the clean campsite philosophy…..all about managing people as much as wildlife. Good plan, tough job.