Unfinished Business

Tuesday, 2 August 2011

Conquering fear

To get to the top of the Sulphur Mountain, it's "just" an eight minute gondola ride up 7486 feet. Armed with Immodium and Rescue Remedy, I still feared I'd chicken out at the last minute. So glad I didn't. It was mind-blowing. You get 360 degree panoramic views of all the surrounding peaks and a view below of valleys, rivers, lakes, trails, the Trans Canada Highway and the town of Banff. I've made a small album of the views, but you need actually to be there, really.
We walked along the mountain ridge on a skywalk which connects Mount Sulphur with Mount Sanson, named after Norman Sanson who was in charge of the weather centre there, built at his suggestion in 1903. As park meteorologist, he made over 1000 trips up to the peak (he took the King and Queen of Siam up there in 1931) right up to the age of 84. When he died, he left no will; just the request that his epitaph should read "Gone higher.",
There's a couple of pictures of the weather station here, including one of the inside: what it was like in Sanson's time.
I was so happy to conquer my fear of being dangled in space halfway up a mountain, I'm up for the Jasper one now, which is 13 minutes!
We also went to the Bow Falls Hoodoos today. These are tall sandstone columns which have been carved into amazing shapes by the forces of wind, rain and river water. I've put a photo up on the left-hand column. Incidentally, any of the photos on the main body of this blog can be enlarged to fit your screen if you double click on it, but this doesn't work for the pictures down the side, so if you want to see any of them larger, they're in an album here.
And I just realised that I'd restricted all the Picasa albums to just me seeing the photos. Not much good! (I was there!) I hope I've changed the links successfully now. Let me know if not.

Monday, 1 August 2011

The weather is unusually glorious, according to a lifeguard at Moraine Lake, particularly as it's a holiday weekend. In May it was 5ft deep snow; today it glistened in the sun on the mountain tops.

First we went to Lake Louise which was stunning. Full of visitors but we escaped them and walked away from the main drag, by the water. It's the most unusual colour: not green, not blue, not silver or grey. It's because the glaciers coming into the lake churn up and ground down the rocks at the bottom of the lake, producing what's called rock flour which makes it this strange cloudy colour.

You know you're old when

'handsome' and 'young' are used alongside the word 'professor', and I got to sit next to one on the plane here. As we flew over Greenland, I was all wired up to and engrossed in The Little Fockers, unaware of what was out of the window. He's very kindly emailed me these photos which he took with his phone.

Sunday, 31 July 2011

Two summers ago we went to the central section of the Rockies, last year we did the southern section and here we are in the northern section. It's unfinished business. We flew into Calgary, drove to Banff, which was heaving as it's a holiday weekend, to discover our log cabin had been booked for August 30 - not July 30, and there wasn't room in any of the inns until we came upon a bed and breakfast which proudly advertised it was established in 1947. This wasn't repro; it was the real deal. But everyone was nice and the cabin people were mortified and could take us the next day and as it had become a 22 hour day we were happy just to get some food and sleep.

There are 37 B and Bs in Banff and we are now where we should be: Banff Beaver cabins. It's a Heritage Site and the cabins were built in 1914. In 1928, Parks Canada let people use "backyard developments" to absorb tourist demands and by 1937 there were over 400 backyard cabins for tourists. Then cabin construction was stopped in 1939 and the Beaver cabins are one of the few remaining. And we'd wondered why the place last night had Wendy houses in the garden. That's why.

So, Day One we went to Lake Minnewanka (fnarr, fnarr) then to the must-see Johnston Canyon which I am sure would have been wonderful if no one else had been there, but it was hard to appreciate nature's silence surrounded by so many people and so many languages, but then we came upon Marble Canyon in British Columbia which was completely wonderful and I will try and upload some pics but the iPad isn't quite as flexible as the laptop.

Rocky Mountains

It's not when you notice that the crisps packets in the supermarket are all puffed up, or when you see the girl with altitude sickness throwing up on the side of the road - no, it's when the rollerball pops out of your deodorant and makes a nest in your armpit; that's when you know you're in the rocky mountains.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

The Bar-U was Canada's first corporate ranch and is now a historic site. (As a by the way, in 1919 Prince Edward the abdicator visited it and loved it so much he bought the one next door).
It was quite a community, with some of the ranch hands out with the cattle living in wagons -which have now been restored and are on site - while at the ranch itself the other men were working in the smithy, fixing things, mulching the grain, harvesting hay - all kinds of agricultural stuff. And everything has now been preserved.
It was also the biggest breeder of Percheron horses. When we went into the stable, there were all the right horsey noises and smells, so imagine our surprise to see the horses were cardboard cut outs! Then we went into some other stables and, again, there were all the right horsey noises and smells and we thought, "Not going to be fooled again" and these ones were real!
There was a cookhouse where all the men ate, and upstairs a dormitory where they slept. There was even a post office on the ranch. Only the manager could have his wife with him, but fortunately there was a brothel nearby.
Everyone who works at the Bar-U now is so enthusiastic and full of it all, it really was a fascinating thing to do and some photos are here on a slideshow. I think you'll like them.

Medicine Lake

This is a weird one: it's a lake with holes in its bottom. So, rather like a bath when the plug's not quite in, in summer when the water run-off from the glaciers fills the lake more quickly than it can drain away, you get a deep, expansive lake. But in winter, when the run-off slows right down, the lake shrinks to a small stream. The water flows out through the holes into an underground cave system, re-emerging 10 miles downstream. In the 1950s people tried to plug the holes with sandbags, mattresses and bundles of magazines! So that's where all those council magazines went.

Glacier National Park

In 1850 there were about 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now, thanks to global warming, there are only about 26 left, and it's reckoned they'll all be gone by 2030. Wonder if they'll have to change the name.
It's 1600 square miles with, essentially, one road running through it so lots of trails and tracks for walking and exploring. We did a great ride, just five of us. All these stables have different rules, regulations and attitudes. This one, you had to sign and initial pages of waivers, basically agreeing that riding is a dangerous and rugged sport and you understand that you might die. No cameras allowed, but if your horse stops to pee you should stand up in your stirrups and alert the wrangler to halt the ride by calling out "Potty break!" As you can imagine, Steve said very firmly that was something to which he could not agree.
We also had a boat trip on Lake Macdonald in a 1920s wooden boat in the most wonderful weather. The lake is ten miles long and 4 1/2 miles wide. It's all very big here.