Louise and Takkakaw

Venturing from Banff to Lake Louise on the Trans Canada Highway, there are several overpasses like this one.  Yes, those trees are growing on the overpass...it's a route for the critters to safely cross the freeway.  On either side of the road for several kilometers fences block the wildlife from venturing onto the highway and route them toward the critter overpasses.  I didn't see any moose or grizz on them, but they use 'em.

Chateau Lake Louise, accomodating travelers in luxury for over a century.  Even with the Canadian dollar cheap for us Yanquis, the rates are a bit high... like 600 Canadian per night and up.

You can rent canoes and paddle upon the waters of the lake.

Yes, the lake is turquoise...as are a lot of lakes in these parts.  

A dead tree in the lake.

There are large glaciers at the far end of the lake, on the Plain of Many Glaciers.  If you can hike that far, it's still civilized...there's a teahouse where you can enjoy a cuppa.  I didn't make it that far.  There's also another lake about 1500 feet up above Louise...also with a teahouse.

Now I'm in a lesser known national park, Yoho, adjacent to Banff across the provincial border in British Columbia.  This waterfall is about 800 feet high.  It's fed by glaciers out of sight on a plateau above the falls.  In Yosemite, the waterfalls peak in spring and are almost dry by August.  (With the drought this year, Yosemite Falls IS dry).  Takkakaw peaks in August and is at a minimum in winter, when there's no melting snow or ice to feed it.

Lizards kickin' it at Takkakaw.

Another shot of Takkakaw, with its water moving downhill below the cascade.  BTW Yoho is an Indian word meaning, roughly, Whoa!  Cool!  In otherwords, an expression of awe.

The Splendor of Jasper

I made my third visit to Jasper NP in Alberta last month.  It's wild, majestic, pristine, tranquil (except at the prime touron spots), and grand.  This is the Astoria River Canyon, a classic U shaped glacial valley.  Deep wilderness awaits the hardy backpacker here.

When I last visited this site in 2007, there was a glacier here on the slopes of Mount Edith Cavell.  Ghost Glacier seemed to be precarious...a relatively small chunk of ice...or so it seemed...hanging on a steep slope.  I thought it could just break off and drop to the bottom of the canyon at any time...and in 2012 it did!

The glacier fell from its perch in the upper left corner of this pic into Lake Cavell at the bottom.  Turns out it was bigger than I thought...had the volume of about 1400 city buses!  When the glacier fell into the lake, it created a mini tsunami that overflowed and rushed down the canyon through the car park below.  BTW the ice in the upper right of the pic is Angel Glacier.  100 years ago it extended clear to the valley bottom.

Lake Cavell...still partly icebound in August.  The Cavell glacier at the back of the pic periodically calves into the lake...this happened while I was there.

Angel Glacier generates summer waterfalls that flow between the ice and Lake Cavell below.

An explanation of Ghost Glacier.  Blow up the pic for details.

From lake level Angel Glacier does look a bit like an angel with wings outstretched.  However, if you take the trail leading up the moraine above the lake, you eventually get a view of the glacier that looks just like the Texas Longhorns logo!

The Longhorn presiding over Lake Cavell and the boreal forest.

A pika, in August already accumulating supplies for the coming winter.  There were also marmots scurrying around the rocks hereabout.

The Athabasca River.  To me, the name evokes strong images of the north.  Athabasca.  Doesn't sound tropical.  Pronounce the word and you almost shiver...aaaa thaaabasca.  Here the river has divided, flowing around an island, and the eastern channel has a different color than the western.

Athabasca Falls, roaring through a narrow canyon.  From a broad river in the above pic, the flow constricts through the limestone a little upstream.  BTW the Athabasca originates from its namesake glacier upstream, portrayed in an earlier blog post.

Blow up this pic for a good image of maximum turbulence.

The Athabasca cuts through the Canadian Rockies.  Notice the small trees on the islands...the islands are temporary, subject to floods, thus so are the trees.  Another thing I realized is that while late summer is a period of drought and low river flow across much of western North America, that's not the way it is up here, because the river takes its water from the glacier, which is large and melting profusely.  The lowest flows here are in late fall and winter when there is little or no glacial melt and almost no rain...all the precipitation falls as snow.  

Another fine shot of the mighty Athabasca and the Canadian Rockies.  Breathe deeply, and enjoy the Northland.  Summer is short here...I drove some of the route with the top down on my Solara, but in the month since then it's snowed two or three times at the highest elevations of the Icefields Parkway between Jasper and Banff.

A tranquil scene at Patricia Lake, where I stayed for three days in Jasper.  At dawn and dusk you can hear the loons cry...a fine voice in the wilderness.

Wetland near Patricia Lake.  Prime habitat for moose and grizzlies...though I didn't see either.  

Pyramid Lake at dusk, with Mt Edith Cavell in the background.  Just a couple km from Patricia Lake.

Stormy Calgary

Last month in Alberta, I visited a buffalo jump site...it's a National Historical Park.  There were some Blackfeet tribe members there dancing in their homeland.

This is the cliff the Indians herded the buffalo over, much of the time for several thousand years until the late 19th century.  This was a project that involved all the members of the tribe.  On the plateau above, a path was developed using trees and bushes to mark the sides of the route.  This corridor was constructed by the women.  Once that was done, some of the men, wearing wolf skins, started running among the buffalo grazing up from the corridor.  The men riled up the buffalo and stampeded them toward the cliff.  The rest of the tribe raised a ruckus, keeping the beasts in the corridor leading to the cliff edge.  The buffalo went over the edge, most dying from the fall...the men finished off the ones who were just injured.  The jump was originally about twice as high as it is now...the bones of the buffalo piled up over the millenia, and were covered by soil and vegetation.  It is estimated that a typical successful jump netted the Indians 50-100 buffalo.  Every part of the animal was used...bones became tools and weapons; hide was made into clothing and tipi walls.  Horns became drinking vessels.  The meat was partially eaten short term...the rest was often dried and preserved for future consumption, or ground up and mixed with berries to form pemmican, a tasty, nutritious food that sustained the people through the winter.

The Canadian prairies east of the Rockies have a climate very similar to Denver's, except about 10 degrees cooler year round.  Thus, August is thunderstorm season!  This storm south of Calgary laid down a wall of rain.

I drove into Calgary on MacLeod Trail, straight toward a rotating wall cloud!  The day before, torrential rain and golfball size hail had caused widespread damage in the city.

Cool clouds from my hotel room on the 15th floor of the Best Western.

Marble size hail fell that afternoon, mostly covering the car park.  My Solara is just above the yellow/orange vehicle in the lot.  The car had been very dirty...the hail washed it clean as a whistle without causing damage!  The same thing happened to me in Denver more than 30 years ago.

Hail on the roof of the Solara.

Cool late afternoon light after the thunderstorms.  Hadn't been to Calgary since 1972...I figured it was time for a return visit.

This was the next day.  No thunderstorms, but the temperature was in the low 50s with rain all day....in the first week of August!  I had to buy an umbrella.  At the end of the day, though, the light was fine.

A cool apartment building in my 'hood in Calgary.

Fine view of downtown from the south.  My hotel was in a neat area...some old homes, some modern highrise apartments...similar to the West End in Vancouver.  I could walk to the north and be downtown in a few minutes.  Walking south, in a few minutes I was in the hills among large, stately homes.

Cruising Down the Coast

As of  Tuesday, September 1, I have progressed down the coast to Brookings OR on my way home.  Had some interesting weather last Friday...an unseasonably strong storm raked the Washington and Oregon coasts.  There were branches down in places as far south as northern Oregon, but the hardest hit area was in Olympic National Park near Kalaloch.  Had to do a slalom around trees and branches in the roadway last Friday morning.

Debris in a parking lot near the beach.  Just south of here, I was delayed for about half an hour...a tree nearly three feet in diameter fell across highway 101 and the authorities had to saw it up and clear the road.

But, I had a nice spot to wait out the delay.  A driftwood strewn beach near Kalaloch.

Two days later the weather was much quieter as I hiked a bit of the Cape Lookout trail.

A beach near the cape.

There are two Haystack Rocks on the northern Oregon coast.  This is the lesser known one, at Cape Kiwanda.

Along the Otter Crest Loop, the old highway 101, I found this classic Conde McCullough bridge.  As the state's main bridge architect in the 1930s, McCullough built most of the bridges on 101...Art Deco classics.

The Solara next to a typical coastal tree.

Devil's Churn, just south of Yachats.

Typical Oregon beach near the churn.  There are hundreds of fine strands in the Beaver State.  It would take an entire summer to visit them all.

This scene on the Siltcoos River in the Oregon Dunes presents a bit of a mystery.  Blow the pic up and check out the stumps in the meadow.  They're obviously quite old.  When and how did they get there?  Two events in 1964 may have done it...a tsunami in March, and a massive flood in December.  There have been other big storms since, but my bet would be that those stumps have been in place for just over 50 years.

Face Rock...on the left...looks skyward at Bandon.

I've always liked this beach with its large rocks, about 5 miles south of Gold Beach.

Arch Rock, about 10 miles north of Brookings.

Yet another fine beach near Arch Rock.  This one entails a steep hike through the bush to enjoy it.