CR2014: Two Days at Talus Lodge

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).

CR2014: Return to Talus

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.

CR2014: To Canmore and East End of Rundle

Our 2014 Canadian Rockies adventure began on May 16, when we flew to Canmore. But there's a prologue, courtesy of Delta Airlines.

Joan booked our flights with Delta on January 17th, snagging a great round-trip fare to Calgary from Columbus. We would arrive in Calgary at 11:00 am (give or take), with a one-hour layover in Minneapolis, and depart from Calgary for home at 8:10 am. Three legs were first class; the flight from Minneapolis back to Columbus was economy-only.

On February 23rd Delta changed the schedule: the layover in Minneapolis would be 3½ hours, and we would arrive in Calgary at 1:30 pm instead of 11:00 am. There would not be time to take the roundabout route to Canmore via Marv's Classic Soda Shop. The Calgary departure was now 6:50 am. Ugh. Such steps backward to an originally great schedule.

On April 24th Delta called us and left a message. Two flights from Minneapolis to Calgary were being combined, and we were bumped out of first class. They were sorry for the inconvenience and would issue us $500 vouchers. And put us on an already clogged wait list for first. Our flight times were the same.

May saw two spurts of further alterations, mostly minor, such as flight numbers. But the flight from Minneapolis back to Columbus changed; it would now be a three-class aircraft rather than a single-class, and since we had booked economy, our seats were now in row 20 rather than row 3. When we discovered this Joan called Delta to complain. Hey, if that flight had been three-class from the start ... the agent moved us to 'economy comfort,' the middle class. Squeaky wheel.

We arrived in Minneapolis, waited out our longer layover, and then went to the gate, where we saw that Delta was frantic. The flight to Calgary was seriously overbooked; they needed at least 12 or 13 people willing to be bumped in return for flight vouchers. The bidding had actually started 24 hours before flight time on the online check-in. When we arrived the offer was $500 per person. It kept creeping up. By the time we boarded the plane the bump offer was $1300, but the catch was, the next flight would not arrive in Calgary until 11 pm. Not acceptable for us. Several minutes after getting settled in our seats, an agent came on board to and talked to a couple, asking if they were still willing accept the last offer. We heard that those last two seats went for $1500 apiece.

Good work, Delta. But we reached Calgary on time, rented a car from Hertz with decent trunk space (VW Passat), and made it to Canmore for the check-in window at Canadian Artisans Bed & Breakfast.

This is the window in the door to our suite, the upper of the two offered by Valerie and Bob Knowlden.

We had dinner at Rocky Mountain Flatbread, a short walk from the B&B and an excellent choice for a travel day. Then we crashed after our lengthy adventure.

On the 17th we tackled East End of Rundle. This hike is just across the valley from Ha Ling, which we had, to our amazement, successfully completed last year. After parking at a wide area next to Whiteman's Pond we crossed the road and began to climb.

The trail switchbacks as a true trail at first, but quickly becomes braided as it ascends over rock slabs and other obstacles that call for some scrambling skills. A couple of times we backtracked and took an alternate route.

It was huff-and-puff work, but there was always a view of the valley to pause and admire. The slopes of Ha Ling were also constant visual companions.

There are a couple of benches and meadows on the way up where the trail is temporarily flat. This is the first.

Plants and trees flourish in the most unlikely spots in this alpine environment.

Up and up we went. We reached a point where you could look into the Bow and Spray Lakes Valleys, separated by Ha Ling and its siblings, at the same time. The haziness is due to forest fires further north.

A meadow was the second big landmark. Hikers on this meadow had caught our eye last year as we climbed Ha Ling.

Joan and I decided to keep climbing to reach not the peak, but the edge of the ridge, to peer down into the Bow Valley and Canmore.

At full zoom, my camera captured this image of Canmore's new Elevation Place. I don't have a sweeping panorama of the Bow Valley because I was wrestling with my substitute camera on this first outing.

Here's a look down into the Whiteman's Pond, part of the three-dam power generation system fed by the Spray Lakes reservoir. The water falls 300 meters from this middle dam to the second power station. We parked not far from the narrow right-hand end of the pond.

This view looks back the way we had come; the meadow is on the right.

There are a variety of courageous plants growing among the scree up here.

Our hike back down was less intimidating from a route-finding point of view, our having seen the terrain on our way up, but there were still a couple of occasions where we took the less desirable braid, or where Joan and I briefly took separate routes around an obstacle. Going downhill on a steep slope is always tougher on the joints than going up, and we were glad for our hiking poles.

We met several people coming up on the way down. A late start doesn't deter people out here. Then again, sunset isn't until after 9:40 pm.

Joan and I were well pleased with this initial hike. Our incessant tromping of the paths at Clear Creek Metro Park had strengthened our muscles, but more time was still needed to boost our red blood cells -- I'm sure we reached 8,000' altitude on this hike.

Tomorrow we would return to Talus Lodge.