July 21st opened with a spotlight on the flanks of the mountains to the west.
Joan and I came up to breakfast to discover that our companion pigs had been playing in the kitchen. Doc Maybe was perched in a lookout spot,
and Percy was balancing on the draining rack!
Bad weather moved in, clouds, fog, and for a while, hail (click on the photo to enlarge).
Clouds came scudding up from the lower valleys.
The helicopter waited out this bad weather; in the end, the delay was only an hour, and Joan and I were not on a tight schedule today. The helicopter came up from the valley and swung around the bowl, rather than popping over the ridge.
The landing included pivoting the helicopter to keep the external storage locker on the same side as the luggage.
Half of a family group (Dad and daughter) were dropped off at the Shark Mountain helipad to pick up their car; Mom and son would fly to Canmore and wait for them.
For this final leg I got a turn in the front seat.
The clouds were still low down here, but they didn't deter an experienced pilot. We were going downhill to Canmore, not up into the mountains.
After disembarking in Canmore and grabbing our bags, we had trouble opening and closing the trunk in our rental car. On investigation the fault turned out to be a pebble wedged into the latch mechanism, which we dislodged.
Joan and I had extra time in the afternoon, so we drove a while up the Icefields Parkway to drink in the landscape.
We certainly weren't the only ones.
Then we returned to the Trans-Canada Highway and drove on to Field, where we would spend the night. There is a trail leaving from the Kicking Horse Campground, called A Walk in the Past.
This is an interpretive historical trail, with printed guides visible in the lower right of the photo. The signs on the trail are easy to find.
The path departs from a flat campground, so we weren't expecting an interesting landscape. However, the trail soon launches into a climb up the flank of the mountain, crosses the railroad and under the TransCanada. It grows into a broader way that follows the steep (4.5%) railroad bed originally used before the creation of the Spiral Tunnels, which reduced the grade to a manageable 2.2% in 1908.
At the end of the trail lies an narrow gauge locomotive, abandoned when the construction of the Spiral Tunnels was completed.
It's a Baldwin 2-6-0 mogul steam locomotive, as described in this plaque (click on the photo to enlarge).
There was a panoply of flowers in one section of the route. Here, a tall white bog orchid.
The indian paintbrush is one of the most widespread flowering plants, and most varied in color, in the Canadian Rockies.
And here is the mountain death camas. As you might suspect, it's not a good idea to eat the flowers.
Impressive in an entirely different way was this tree, bark clawed off by a bear. My walking stick provides scale. I'm glad I wasn't here the same time as the bear.
We returned to our car and checked into the nearby Cathedral Mountain Lodge, where we unpacked. This required precision because most of the floor space is filled with the bed, a short armoire, gas-fired heater, and chairs. After unpacking the minimum amount for a one-night stay, we had dinner at the lodge.
When Joan and I went to bed, it became clear that the cabins have a design problem. They have a high clerestory ("clear story") window facing the porch, which admits light from the strategically placed porch light. The porch light automatically turns on at dusk and cannot be turned off. There is no curtain or other means of preventing the bright light from entering the cabin. It was too high to reach. We finally gave up; I re-dressed and trudged over to the front desk, where the surprised but helpful staff member rustled up a short stepladder, and we successfully turned off the light by unscrewing the bulb a couple of turns. Insulating my hand by a towel, of course.
Darkness properly established, we went to sleep. Tomorrow, Lake O'Hara!
July 19th was a cool, drizzly day at Talus Lodge. We first hiked to the overlook that spied down on the valley on the British Columbia side.
The route gradually steepens until the guides decide it's time to suggest staying back from the edge.
This long-toppled tree still grasps one of the stones in its roots.
We then hiked up to the Ptarmigan Plateau as the drizzle grew into a light shower and the wind picked up. I don't have any pictures from this portion of the day, but there are plenty of the plateau to come tomorrow. The plateau is a geologist's fantasy, with many different formations and tumble-down stones from different strata above.
This photo shows us approaching the lodge at the end of the hike. Note that the tip of the Talon, top center, is in a cloud.
The skies cleared in the evening.
As the sun set Nature brought out her color palette.
July 20th was a good hiking day from the start. Here's the view from the deck at breakfast.
The tip of the Talon was brightly lit.
The guests split into two groups. Joan and I joined Chris' group and started out heading up towards the Ptarmigan Plateau. On the way we admired this moss campion.
Soon a hoary marmot bounded across our field of view.
Then the ptarmigans of the Ptarmigan Plateau made a stunning appearance, three adults and five chicks in all. In this photo there is one of each.
Two adults, one chick. Note the reddish eyebrow of the adult on the left (click to enlarge).
Now we see two chicks.
As long as we stayed subdued the ptarmigans were not skittish. In this photo we're being checked out!
A closeup.
As much as we admired the ptarmigans, soon it was time to move on. After threading among the blocks and crevasses our group reached an outlook with a grand view of the valley to the east of our mountain. The clouds generated a patchwork of brightness and darkness, accentuated by the camera.
We then proceeded around the shoulder of the mountain, heading off to the right (south), and encountered a patch of glacier lilies.
I was compelled to take a closeup of this alpine marvel. Its tubers are a favorite food of the grizzly bear.
We continued south, crunching over snow fields. Suddenly Chris, the Talus Lodge owner and our guide, stopped. He was in front and had spotted a grizzly, downhill and slightly ahead of us. The grizzly rose onto his hind legs and scanned about, trying to identify the disturbance, and then dropped down behind the snow. I was the only one who had seen the bear, besides Chris, being tall enough to peer over the snowbank. The sighting was over in a few seconds, but we bunched closer together, slowly backed away uphill, and then turned around, forsaking the glorious glacier lily field further on that Chris had promised. Better safe than sorry! We returned as far as an overlook, and lunched. Leman Lake and Burstall Pass are in the distance, centered in the photo.
Chris liked the colors of the rain jackets Joan and I were wearing (blue for Joan, orange for me).
We began our return to the lodge by ascending to the High Bench, above the Ptarmigan Plateau. Halfway along we stopped to admire the landscape spread wide before us.
We continued on, finding our way among the fractured blocks,
and the lodge came into view.
Chris found another resting place, from which we could look down on the lodge.
Those who had not been in our group had taken up the challenge of swimming in one of the ponds this afternoon. We could hear them screaming, and with binoculars, could see ripples emanating from a portion of the waters hidden by an intervening moraine. I did take a photo of our aquatic comrades as they picked their way back to the lodge.
Today was perfect: views, flowers, and critters (even if most of us didn't see the grizzly).
The next day of our Canadian Rockies trip, July 18th, we flew to Talus Lodge (you must fly in) for a three-night stay. This was our second trip to the lodge, which we had first visited in 2010.
I'm mostly clipped out of this photo taken inside the heli.
When we arrived the smoke from forest fires to the north had drawn a thin veil across the sun.
This concatenation of three clips shows some of the helicopter operations. All passengers, staff, and supplies reach the lodge by helicopter.
The lower level of the lodge holds four rooms; the upper level has the kitchen, lounge, and dining areas.
The wash-house, connected to the lodge by a walkway, holds the sauna, showers (pour-it-yourself style), and toilets.
In the early afternoon we set out on our first hike. All hikes here are guided; there are no trails as such. There were eight guests, including two youngsters, and two guides, including the owner, Chris.
Joan and I had chosen this time of year to see the spring flowers. This is probably an alpine buttercup.
Springtime also features plenty of bird activity. This is a juvenile gray-crowned rosy finch.
Chris led us around tarns (seasonal pools) and up moraines, gaining altitude. The lodge is at 2300m, or 7600', so we needed stops to catch our breath. In this photo the lodge is barely visible at the extreme left, below the horizon; click to enlarge. The large lake never dries up.
Our other guide was wearing sporty bandages, supporting some tendons (ligaments?) in advance of a marathon (or was it a triathlon?) at the end of the week.
Alpine fireweed was blooming.
Twenty minutes after photographing the fireweed, I captured this image looking ahead. We will turn left up a side valley and reach the top of the dark bluff, known as Angels' Landing, right of center.
Parts of that climb were steep with shifting rock fragments, so Joan and I were glad to have our hiking poles. We could have done it without them, but our confidence level was much higher with them. Joan took my "summit" photo.
Here is a panoramic view from our summit.
As you can see, the nose of the landing supports a surprising amount of vegetation,
including this eight-petaled mountain avens.
After climbing down from the landing our group visited a waterfall and a natural bridge (alas, no photos). Back at the lodge, standing on the deck as dinnertime approached, I spotted two white spots traversing a high ridge. I suspected it wasn't a case of white rocks, and checked with my binoculars. It was an adult and juvenile mountain goat! Being a notoriously bad spotter, I was inordinately pleased with myself.
Dinner was wonderful -- all the meals here were. We looked forward to tomorrow's breakfast.
