Four-Bear-ance

Four times this weekend we had bear encounters.

Yesterday, on our way down to Troll Falls, we saw the Fish & Wildlife officers wheel in with lights flashing to the Widowmaker Day Use area. One leapt out of his truck with a Karelian Bear Dog, and dashed off into the woods. On our way back from the hike several hours later, that same F&O guy was parked with lights flashing at the Barrier Lake Day Use Area keeping an eye on Mr. Bruin, who appeared to have wandered a few kilometers down the road during the day.

Today, there was a grizzly bear warning for the Num Ti Jah lodge area, but we didn't see that one. We did, however, pass a bear jam on Hwy 93 a few kilometers south of Num Ti Jah Lodge. There was a medium sized black bear feeding on the side of the road with a dozen or so cars on the road watching him and taking pictures. On the way home, this Mr. Bear had only moved a kilometer along the road, and was gorging himself on a tree, of all things.



I have never seen a bear eat a tree before. Wonder what kind of tree it was.

Bow Glacier Falls

The snow line still remains fairly low, making most hiking still off limits. Nothing that was not snowbound in K-Country turned my crank, but Banff was reporting that the Bow Glacier Falls hike was free of snow and in good shape. This is pushing my limits for distance at 90 minutes from The West Wing, but the hike is easy and has only a 95 m height gain that all happens in one short stretch. In addition, it's been years since I ventured up the Icefield Parkway, and I also wanted to check up the Bow Summit hike -- only to discover that it, too, was still snowbound. So off the the Falls we went.

The hike starts with a lovely walk along the shoreline of Bow Lake -- half of which is still covered in ice.



Views of the Bow Glacier just keep getting better and better.



In addition, at this time of the year, there's tons of waterfalls on the sides of the valleys.



After crossing the flats, you open up to a vista that includes part of the Wapta Icefield as well as the falls themselves, the Bow Glacier having long disappeared from view behind the cliff face.






Then comes the grand finale: the falls themselves.






The views back towards Bow Lake are pretty decent despite the low elevation.





There weren't a lot of critters, but ther was one very proud Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel who insisted on posing for me.



Heading home, I also had to stop and take a picture of the Crowfoot Glacier, too.

Troll Falls & Hummingbird Plume Lookout

We were looking for a hike that was close to home, not snowbound, short and not too strenuous. Well, we got some of them right. Troll Falls is always a nice short jaunt, starting with a nice stroll through meadows past the Kananaskis River...



...to get the the falls, that are always "cool and green and shady."



At the falls, we decided we had time to climb up to Hummingbird Plume Lookout. Okay, it's a 1:30 slog, 400 vertical meters up a fire road through a disenchanted forest. But the views at the top of the Kananaskis Valley are nice.




Plus, we found a very cheeky chipmunk (probably a Least Chipmunk, but because they're so similar, he could have been a Yellow Pine Chipmunk).



There's really nothing wrong with this hike, but there's nothing really right about it either. The trail's a road, and aside from a few cascading streams, basically boring. It's an up and down, not a loop, so you get to walk the boring part twice. And fundamentally, it's just a continuous up-hill slog.

But it's only 35 minutes from The West Wing.

We lost another one

I was depressed to read in the paper this week that a grizzly sow and one of her two cubs were killed by a train just east of Canmore.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Travel/Grizzly+bear+killed+train+near+Canmore/1675722/story.html

Wildlife officers were able to catch the orphan cub the next day, and relocate it.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Wildlife+officers+capture+bear/1680365/story.html

This particular bear loss hits close to home. We went hiking on May 31 on some trails in Canmore near the Alpine Club of Canada headquarters. TrailX (http://www.trailex.org/) had reported this sow and her cubs in the area that we hiked the day after we were there; by June 4th, the Kananaskis site (http://www.tpr.alberta.ca/parks/kananaskis/trailreport.aspx) had warnings up as well. The Old Camp Day Use Area where the cub was caught is only 3.2 km across the Bow Valley as the crow flies from the West Wing. Bear 71 (the sow) was not a bad, habituated bear, but was in fact a good and productive breeder. As the article notes, this is the second grizzly killed by a train in 4 weeks.

Strikes me that we need to consider fencing the train tracks the same way that they fenced the highway.

Hummingbird Wars

Chris Fisher and John Acorn write, in "Birds of Alberta"...

The tiny Rufous Hummingbird is a delicate avian jewel, but it's beauty hides a relentless mean streak. Sit patiently... alongside a hummingbird feeder, and you'll soon notice the territoriality and aggressiveness of these birds - they buzz past one another and chase rivals for some distances. Although it must seem lifke life and death situations to these birds, to our eyes, the scale of conflicts between these mini mites is cute.

They don't know the half of it.

We have at least 3 females and 2 males using our feeder, and spent two hours on Saturday watching them all fight over it. The females guard it relentlessly, two rivals sitting together mere feet apart in a tree.



They seem to throw insults at one another, constantly chattering away, and acting big.




Let either one attempt to feed and the other chases and attacks with tail fathers spread out. They blast around the at 60 mph sky in violent aerial attacks oblivious to onlookers like me. Try and photograph that and see how you do...




The boys, on the other hand, with their iridescent red throats, appear to be allowed to eat at will.





Then the boys fly what appears to be a mating dance. They blast along at 60 mph, then pull up 100' in the air, perform a hammerhead stall, and rocket back they way they came. They then pull a u-turn somehow (we never saw how) then tear off and do it again, and again, and again. Amazing to watch.

These are just beautiful critters to see.

Raven's End

Raven's End is a book by Ben Gadd (who I happened to meet today), and it's also the name of the very, very popular hiking route to the east end of Yamnuska. "Very, very popular" means we ran into two large groups of 25 and 15, and about 60 others on the hike. This happens in part because this is also one of the best early season hikes, being snow free early in the season, and also because there are people who like to climb the backside to the top of Yamnuska. We saw at least 30 people doing just that.

It's a challenging walk, steep in sections, with some very nice views as you crest one sandstone ridge after another. These views are mostly of the Morely Flats and the front ranges.





It takes about 2 hours to see behind the ridge into CMC Valley, which was interesting to me because I have never seen it before.




There was one very cheeky golden mantled ground squirrel at the top. He got so close his nose almost touched my camera lens. He seemed to want to get into my backpack. My guess is he has been fed before...







He, too, seemed to enjoy the view of the CMC Valley...




It was a nice hike, not a great one, and possibly the best part was seeing a bald eagle on our way down.

Chesley's High School Grad

Chesley's grad and party were yesterday. 615 grads, plus parents and hangers on, equals a A LOT of people. First the grad:











Then there was the grad party itself. Take a peek at how beautiful my daughter is...










'Aint she cute?