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More hiking than riding & new animal sightings

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A couple of rides last week, of which the highlight was my first bear sighting. Thankfully, the young black bear was a couple of hundred of metres away from us at the Nordic Center & we saw it first. We hung around at a distance for a little while watching it before altering our intended route so as to avoid provoking it or its mother. Earlier that evening, Alex & I had rode up the road & come down the Reclaimer a lot more confidently than our only previous ride down that trail. Thursday evening was spent taking both of Alex & Megan’s cars to the Mt Shark trailhead in K-Country & leaving one there for us to ride back to Canmore in at the end of our planned hike. Much of the rest of the evening was spent otherwise preparing for our upcoming three-day hike. We were to walk from Sunshine Meadows (over the back of the Sunshine), past Mt Assiniboine & then past Mt Shark to the car. As it’s only about six weeks before the baby is due to arrive, this was planned as being the last big hiking outing for Megan & Alex for a little while.

Friday dawned nice & clear & James took us up to Sunshine Village (he works at Sunshine too), saving us a walk up a big hill. Here’s what the village looks like out of season:

We were walking by 7.45 that morning & quickly up past where the old Strawberry lift used to be (it’s being replaced this off-season with one that was used in the Vancouver Olympics). It was a bit strange walking up ski runs with no snow oblivious to the fact that a few months ago I was skiing down them & then suddenly recognising different parts of the terrain. The trail across the meadows was wide & easy.

As the day was so still, we took a short detour to Rock Isle Lake to have a look – it was worth it.

All along the meadows we were amused by the antics of the multitudes of ground squirrels popping their heads out of their burrows to watch us go by, chasing each other around & generally just running around in an amusing manner. Before long we had a climb up through a few snow drifts (nothing major – definitely not waist deep as Parks staff were advising) & we could look back over the meadows.

Looking the other way, we could see Lake Howard Douglas (foreground) & Citadel Peak (just beyond the lake) & our first view of Mt Assiniboine (largest peak in the centre rear). We next walked up & over Citadel Pass (just to the left of Citadel Peak) – the highest point of our hike (2360m).

On the way there, we looked down & eventually saw Citadel Lake (which hid from us for quite some time).

We lunched at the top of the pass, with a lot of day walkers also thinking it was a good spot – which it was, the view was pretty good. Alex & I scrambled up a bit higher towards the peak & got a great view down towards where we were camping the first night & further on to Assiniboine.

Looking back towards the meadows, one of the small lakes still had a large percentage of its surface in ice.

From the pass it was three hours walking (mostly) down to the valley floor to Porcupine campsite. We were all pretty tired, even though it wasn’t such a difficult walk – Megan carrying a baby, Alex with a super heavy pack, & me carrying a pack with a tent & sleeping mat in it for the first time & just generally weak & not used to carrying a pack. After the first & only rain all day falling as we put up the tents, the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, purifying water (an involved process with the borrowed pump-filter & UV SteriPen), cooking & eating. A bit later on a couple of English guys from Cheltenham wandered in to camp – they had started at Sunshine Meadows a few days ago & were on their way back from (next to-) Mt Assiniboine. They were able to give us a few pointers on the trail ahead – get through the Valley of Rocks before it gets hot & so on – & I was able to update them on World Cup results. It was a couple of days after I said I would come on this hike that I realised I would miss the final, I was disappointed – although it turns out I didn’t miss much. We hit the hay early (nine-ish) & I slept very well, only briefly woken by a heavy shower of rain when it was still dark. It was a stroke of genius taking my trusty Air NZ eyemask – as it’s only dark at night here from about 10.30 through to 5.00. For most of the first day we crossed over the Alberta – British Columbia border time after time, eventually ending up in BC for the night & the next day & a half.

We got away at about eight o’clock on Saturday morning. It was a climb for thirty-odd minutes away from Porcupine & in to the Valley of Rocks. While we avoided the heat that the guys had had the previous day, it was quite warm & really humid with the overnight rain still sitting around on the foliage. The Valley of Rocks started out rather disappointingly, but eventually the rocks got bigger – but not as big as I expected from various descriptions & not too impressive as they weren’t really standing alone. We surprised a moose (the first I have seen) having its morning drink – that was neat; a little later on we also had a good look at a porcupine (also the first I have seen) stationed in a tree after we happened upon it – they are a lot bigger than I expected.

As we got close to Lake Og (a convenient lunch spot), Assiniboine came back in to view again.

From the lake, we had an easy climb up to Og Meadows – which did take quite a while to get through & it’s for good reason that that walk is nicknamed the Slog of Og.

It threatened to rain on us as we sat on a big rock & watched the ground squirrels try to get up to us. As soon as we came down off our high-spot, the rain took off. We were by this stage getting close to Assiniboine Lodge & the junctions, & therefore signposts, got quite close together. This was a good sign as we only had about four kilometres to go to reach our campsite at Lake Magog – right underneath Assiniboine. Once again, we reached camp at three o’clock. This campsite was a lot bigger with a cooking shelter, about thirty campsites & a few toilets (that were even cleaned daily & had paper). Strangely, none of the sites gave a good view of the mountains. Once tents were pitched, I was keen to pop across to the lake as the sun had reappeared. I wandered off, leaving the others to relax – as I was feeling rather alone with just my water-bottle, camera & bear spray I took to singing the Philosopher’s Song to warn bears of my presence – a song that I realised I knew most of when we broke out in song some time on the Friday. It was a pleasant walk along as far as the trail would take me before I hit too much snow. I was well rewarded too:

Having done fourteen & sixteen kilometres of walking the previous two days, we had 27 km to walk out to the car on Sunday. We were up before everyone else in the campsite – but it wasn’t really that early (6.30-ish). There was a bit of cloud around, so no great early morning photos – but here’s one of the tent I borrowed off Megan – a macpac to go with my pack & most of the clothes I was wearing, not quite sure how that happened.

After briefly detouring to see what the lodge looked like (nothing special), we had an easy climb up to Assiniboine Pass & then back in to Alberta. Most of the rest of the day was spent walking down hill, first steeply down the valley & then reasonable mildly as we followed the Bryant River.

We must have made enough noise playing various alphabet games (first countries, then capital cities, then people of [debatable] historical significance) as although we were in bona fide grizzly country, we did see any. Lunch was before noon again on a convenient bridge, here is the pizza-esque pita bread that was my staple lunch for the trip.

We crossed the Spray River & then had our last big steep climb for about an hour – by now we were all pretty tired (Megan especially) & the final gentle decline to the waiting car took a long time. But 57 km & three days later we made it (still can’t believe Megan managed all that – what a trooper) – what a great weekend & with excellent scenery, weather & company. (There are quite a few more photos, & even some of me, in Alex’s smugmug gallery and also in Megan’s.) We saw another moose on the drive out from the trailhead – very cool.

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The sun stuck around for a bit

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Yes, yes – the rain has gone away (obviously listening to little Johnny) & stayed away for most of the last ten days. I’m still working weekdays at the Banff Center – although that project is supposed to wind up this week, so with a bit of luck I’ll get some more work after that. I’ve been riding so much I’m having trouble remembering the rides last week. Tuesday last was the Highline trail again, I think. We climbed up to the trail proper from Quarry Lake & rode west to east. This route up was pretty good – not all switchbacks & all manageable in the middle ring (for me at least) – it also looked like a gnarly ride down that would flow together nicely. This was a shorter ride than riding up the Three Sisters way or riding up to Riders of Rohan – we were back in an hour & a half. Still a good ride – & Alex seems to be keeping up with me a lot more on the downhills. It’s amazing what a regular riding & a decent pair of tyres will do for the confidence.

I went & saw the tree that I rather ignominiously shoulder-barged in the rain on Friday after work. We were back at the G8 trail on the other side of the Bow Valley. This time we managed to string the loop together in the correct way & it was really quite enjoyable. Of the four rides that line the hills on the Canmore town limits, this is by far the easiest with not a lot of climbing (comparatively speaking). But that doesn’t make it any less fun & a great way to unwind after the week at work. We crossed the walking trail up to Grotto (which we hiked up a few weeks ago) & headed out to the extremities of the trail that we didn’t find last time, enjoyed some nice sweeping corners down a small gully, looped around & headed back to Cougar Creek (the starting point) before cruising home via a small jump park. There were plenty of easy log rides to do, & a quite a few jumps of course. The jump park was overrun with ground squirrels, which were quite amusing.

A group of seven of us went for a little hike on Saturday afternoon. Driving past Banff on the Transcanada, we turned west at Castle Junction on to Highway 93 to walk to Arnica Lake. It was only five kilometres to the lake & only 350 m (climbing) – but having to descend first to Vista Lake, lots to look at & a larger group we took our time.

Looking back across the Bow River to Castle Mountain

The alpine Arnica Lake still had a layer of ice on it – which we amused ourselves with trying to land rocks on it, alas it was too thin.

After watching most of England’s unfortunate exit from the second round, Alex & I headed back to the Heart Creek parking lot. We had a slightly more ambitious loop planned for another beautiful Sunday. We started by retracing our path of two weeks previous & heading up to Jewell Pass. We never worked out why we saw so few people out & about – only a few climbers in the parking lot & a couple of hikers on the trail early on were all we saw before we reached the top of the pass. Having been rather uncomfortable on the climb from the recently inflated rear tyre, I let a little air out before what I knew was going to be another fantastic blast down Jewell Pass – & it was, unfortunately I got a snakebite half way down – grrrr. After changing that tube, we carried on down to the power lines & finally met some more people out enjoying the countryside.

Having found another geocache, it was a ten kilometre ride up the valley to Nakiska Ski Area. Mostly we followed the power company access track, which was mostly pretty annoying gravelly rutty uphill. We could see over to Baldy Pass which we rode over last weekend – it’s over there just to the left of the right-hand peak:

Getting quite hungry by this time, we followed the cross-country skiing trails up to a bridge that we spied on the map boards (a quick side note – many of the recreational areas around here have great little & simple map boards at most intersections, so convenient). It was a long climb (mostly because we were hungry I suspect) to the bridge – & the bridge wasn’t even a bridge, it was a culvert with no troll underneath (the falls just downstream were called Troll Falls). Nonetheless, we had lunch & carried on up to Skogan Pass. It was reasonably gentle climb (middle ring – all day in fact) up to 2150 m over seven or eight kilometres of the road.

After passing through a little residual snow we took the little side trail up to the top of the pass for some great views over the Bow Valley. There is Canmore down in the distance:

The Three Sisters – centre & just right of – not quite as impressive from this angle

It was mostly power company access road for the descent – with a little bit of annoying climb to mix it up a bit. It was a good fast descent – my bike computer had somehow come back to life – I spent a lot of the drop over 45 km/h & almost hit sixty at one stage. In parts the trail narrowed a bit & near the bottom we met a couple of groups of hikers – thankfully on wide open sections where we could see them in plenty of time to slow down a little.Back down near the TransCanada highway, we still had a little way to go to get back to the car. Given the choice of the highway or the TransCanada Trail – we took the singletrack. It started off pretty mellow, & then started climbing up above the highway & got quite tricky with lots of roots, rocks & steps. By this time we were getting pretty tired (over five hours out by then) & a lot of the sketchy looking obstacles were walked over. There was some neat soft moss around that was good for resting on:

Pushing up a long rockface for a minute or so I was glad to reach the top, but also noticed my recently replaced rear tube was getting a bit soft. Stupidly, I ignored it as it wasn’t long until we reached the car. Of course, I got another pinch flat within fifty metres. Alex left me to patch it alone as he seemed to think he was going a lot slower than me. I patched two holes & then enjoyed the singletrack until we hit more fire road & a big climb & I noticed that my tyre needed pumping up again (I found a third hole on the inside of the tube in a different place this afternoon) – this was just getting frustrating. I eventually made it back to the car shortly after Alex – that last section ended up being close to seven kilometres of the most technically demanding trail we had had all day, not the best when you are already a bit tired. So in the end that was a six and a half hour adventure, fifty kilometres, 1600 m of climbing & two flats to keep my hand in at pumping up tubes.

To round the weekend off with a bit more exercise, we had a short game of social soccer on Sunday evening – can’t think why I was a bit sore climbing up the stairs to the roof this morning at work.

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Rain, rides, crash & a sunny stroll

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Tuesday’s ride was preceded by my bike getting a well deserved clean – not that it was worth it in the end – & the start of the ride to the Benchlands area on the other side of the Bow Valley was punctuated with snain/hail again. As it was an after work ride, it wasn’t overly ambitious & the rain curtailed the loop a bit, as the roots got slipperier & slipperier. Still it was a pleasant ride, not too cold & the trail interesting. Going down the last downhill before Cougar Creek I got a little wayward when my front wheel slid on a parallel root & ended up shoulder barging a tree. The tree didn’t move too much – just as well it was my slightly better shoulder & it didn’t do any damage.

Wednesday I just remember it raining a lot at work, Thursday quite a bit too. It wasn’t too cold, in a T-shirt all day – even for the long walks to the garbage skips. Once inside again, we would dry off soon enough. But all that sogginess did put a bit of a damper on Zara’s new found keenness for football (soccer in this country) – our Thursday night kick around was put off a week. The weekend got off to a start that lived up to the forecast of sun & warmth (finally). Friday evening was a cracker & Alex, James & I headed up for a lap of the Orange Circuit at the Nordic Center. It was still a little slippery on the roots & a little muddy in patches, but nothing that posed too much of a concern. It must be noted that I’ve adopted “hey-up” (pronounced more as “hey-oop”) as my advance warning system for bears. I’m pretty sure it was someone at NZ Steel who used to say that a lot – perhaps Jamie brought it over from Pommyland – anyway, it’s a good call to let bears know I’m coming so as not to surprise them too much.

Today’s weather was as beautiful as promised & after getting up much too late – I was shocked to first wake at about six after only five hours sleep, so I watched a bit of the World Cup lying in bed before going back to sleep. I love World Cup time, so much football to watch – the goal that England conceded today against the States was pretty funny too. I also seem to have got hooked watching the rest of the BBC series Luther (I saw the first two while I was still in London) today – lots of good London sights to spot & just general Englishness to remind me of my time there. I’m just waiting for the fourth episode for today (the last in the series) to finish downloading – it may be a later night again.

With Megan only about [mmmm, Alex just bought me a train wreck of a waffle covered in Nutella] nine weeks from due date, our hike today was a little less ambitious than the previous three weekends. I wasn’t complaining though, at least I shouldn’t be walking around for half the week at work with a strained achilles. We drove up in to K-Country (Kananaskis) north of Canmore (& site of my last shoulder dislocation, incidentally) past parking lots full of cars near Ha Ling & the Goat Creek Trail up past the lower Spray Lake. It was a gentle amble up to West Wind Pass – only about 350 metres of altitude gain & even at our pace we were only walking up for seventy-five minutes. It was nice & warm, if a little breezy at the pass. Here are a few pictures to end my rambling.

A sliver of Spray Lakes down below

At the top of the pass

Looking out towards the Bow Valley – Grotto, that we climbed last Sunday, is the peak on the right.

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My bike has finally earned a clean

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Tonight’s been a nice quiet Monday night recovering from the weekend & a strenuous day at work moving too many heavy steel doors. Really all I’ve done is cook a proper meal (my first in almost a month I think, Alex & Megan at pre-natal classes) & made some muffins – Canadian ingredients must be slightly different as they are not quite as good as normal & it’s a really easy recipe. It also seems that Canadians have not heard of self-raising flour, so I had to make some myself (thanks Yahoo Answers).

To more interesting things – Saturday was forecast for rain, but there wasn’t too much of it to discourage Alex & I driving to Lake Minnewanka (said as if Minnie Mouse had married Willie Wonka) – which is approximately opposite Banff over the Transcanada highway. Lake Minnewanka was the first scenery I saw really in the area – Megan took me out there at the start of my January/February trip. The main the difference now is that the surface of the lake has returned to the liquid phase. I’m still undecided which is more beautiful – summer or winter; but the weather on Saturday wasn’t always so nice. We started the ride in the rain & then snain made itself felt. By the time we got to this river after five minutes the sun had come out again.

The riders crossing the bridge finishing their ride looked decidedly muddy – we were about to find out why. The surface of the only real hill of the ride was dirt that was now quite slick & slippery. The mud wasn’t deep, it was more surface water that was running down the trail (it’s never a “track” here) & splashing up to meet up one’s bike, feet, legs & clothes. It did mean however that the climb, which wasn’t particularly steep compared to the ones earlier in the week, was quite difficult as the rear tyre would often slip on roots on small step-ups (I’m still not rating High Rollers that much, even when they have been relegated to the rear). The top of the ascent took us back to the top of a bluff above the lake & for the drop down to the lakeside the trail changed suddenly to being very rocky – it wasn’t too steep, but it was dry & the babyheads (before anyone asks – rocks about the size of a baby’s head, they make for much more interesting riding as they tend to move & send you directions that you didn’t really have in mind) were great fun to negotiate. Not many rocks here for Alex to get through:

The rest of the trail to the warden’s hut (our turnaround point, at about twenty kilometres) was within about twenty or thirty metres (altitude) above the lake, so it wasn’t too strenuous – but still a lot of fun. It’s a very popular trail & we passed many hikers & bikers on the way. As I was at the front for most of the way out I spotted lots of squirrels & deer diving off in to the foliage as I surprised them.

I’m pretty useless at yelling out at blind corners to let bears know I’m coming, but I was pleased not to see one & have to put my new bear spray to use. The trail was pretty smooth for the most part, but there was a good creek crossing that only turned out feasible in one direction.

It was about ninety minutes after setting out when we reached the hut (a little delay for a mechanical – one of the pins holding the parallelogram together in Alex’s rear derailleur thought it a good idea to work its way a fair way out).

Sitting snacking on the side of the lake (which is a good couple of metres lower than it should be – still waiting for the summer melt) we watched clouds roll in up the lake from the direction we came & within long we were getting wet without having to go swimming. So it was back on the bikes again & shortly after it dried out. We got most of the way back without precipitation, but as we were climbing that rocky bluff some nice big drops started falling – by the time we had worked hard to get to the top again, it was proper wet again. That made the final downhill even more fun as we got soaked, muddy & the slipperiness made for some exciting riding. A great day’s ride, even if I do now have to find the time to give my bike a bit of a clean (I’ve been spoilt – I haven’t had to clean it after all the previous rides of the last three weeks).

It was a bit of a late start (1100) for our hike on Sunday as some of us had been out to a late movie & then hit the nightlife of Canmore (tongue firmly in cheek there – Canmore is pretty small, still it kept me up until two). Megan, Alex, Zara & I were off up Grotto – which is opposite Lady Mac over Cougar Creek on the east side of the Bow Valley. This is the highest of the hikes that we had attempted over the last few weeks – the summit is at just over 2700m. Yesterday dawned with the best weather we have had for ages – & the first couple of hours of hiking were uncomfortably hot (the highs don’t seem to have got out of the teens for the last couple of weeks – which is fine by me, great riding temperature). There’s not too much to say about the hike, we walked up a very steep path for ages, then got out of the trees & in to a little snow & walked for quite some time up to the top of the ridge. Due to our late start, leisurely pace & frequent rests/food-stops we didn’t push on for the last thirty-forty minutes of ridge walking to the summit. I think I was the only one disappointed by that, but it was getting late (1530 by the time we turned around) & if I forget just how steep the walk is, I’ll have another go in a few months’ time when all the snow has melted. The walk down seemed to take forever, as it was very steep – mercifully, the trail was pretty good & there was not much sliding/falling involved. All in all, it was an eight hour hike. Here are a few pictures from the day – I hope no one is getting sick of seeing all these.

Alex, Zara & Megan with Lawrence Grassi on the other side of the Bow Valley

Canmore with Lawrence Grassi on the left, Rundle on the right – you can just see the road going up to Whiteman’s Gap in between the two, it doesn’t look such a big bike climb now.

Above the trees now, looking southwest

Looking over the ridge, northeast-ish