The start of winter?

A chilly +5° and rain this morning at the 'ole homestead, and we had to head down over the highest paved car-accessible pass in Canada to do our grizzly camera work today. Even leaving the house we saw snow "at higher elevations". But just how high?

Well, the rain turned snow at 1,835 m -- the elevation of Little Highwood Pass on Hwy 40 -- and by 1,910 m (the Elbow Pass parking lot), the snow was sticking to the ground and the trees. By the 2,200 m Highwood Pass, it should come as no surprise that there was lots of snow.

Yep, that's white 

Ankle deep

We actually saw a grizzly today, hanging out at the side of the road just south of the Highwood Pass.

Big fat boy, which is good.

Dropping back down into the valley on the other side of the pass (and going beyond the new Lost Lemon Mine closure gate), the snow turned back to rain, and we saw a couple of groups of deer just far enough away from the hunters we saw camped on the side of the road down there.

One of the first group 

One of the second group

If they stay where we saw them, they might -- just might -- survive hunting season.

Snow capped peaks poke through the clouds

This snow won't last. It's supposed to be +20° by Friday.

We wanted to hide from the cold and rain to eat lunch, so tried the Pocaterra Hut. Closed. Then the Peter Lougheed Visitors Centre -- still closed. We ended up at William Watson Lodge, and for various reasons, ate in some guys office. Be aware if you head down there, the facility closures have started. I noticed the Grizzly Day Use area is closed, and I suspect so are many others.

And the tree came down

When we moved in, we knew we had a tree in the front yard that was not happy. An 80' tall pine (I thought Scotch pine; turns out it was a Lodgepole) was green only at the top. Last year it looked even sadder, and this year, it was officially covered in dead needles. If it fell, it could hit the house, so we had to remove it, and today, the tree dudes came and took it down.

Karen took about 200 photos of the process, but remarkably, missed the dramatic part where the top 30' came down onto our yard, knocking over one of our metal sculptures in the process.

Unhappy tree. Tree dude climbing it near bottom

Lower branches gone. Tree dude about to lop the top

The final cut, and...

...it comes down...

...landing on a prepared space. Almost.

The rest of the tree was taken down 6' piece by 6' piece.

The last cuts, then... 

...PUSH... 

...and it falls

Being wildlife lovers, we left a "snag" -- the stump of the tree standing tall. Birds like snags, especially owls and woodpeckers, since the dead tree will soon attract bugs. Our snag is about 20' tall. They cut the top about level which allows water to run off (slowing rot), but is flat enough to act as a nesting platform.

Carefully cutting the top

The tree was a victim of pine beetle. Pine beetles are bad but natural and native. They attack weak trees. The dead giveaway to a pine beetle attack is a blue ring around the outside rings of the tree's innards.

Blue ring visible

In short, this tree died at least 5 years ago. Pine beetles basically kill a tree in one season, then move on. We had hoped we could revive it with water and TLC. Alas, 'twas not the case.

Everything about taking it down came off pretty well. There's a baby spruce tree hiding under the leftover logs that probably isn't happy. The main loss was that when the tree top came crashing down, our stump with the metal Standing Hand sculpture on it got knocked over.

Stump on the yarrow. Sculpture to the right

We have to figure out how to re-erect the Hand. We will probably attach it to a portion of the tree's stump, which will last a few years, anyway.
We were sad to lose a tree, but it was his time.

The 2013 Ride on the Legacy Trail

As I wrote about here (in what has become a very popular post), the Legacy Trail was built in 2010 as a bike path connector between Canmore and Banff. I said it was an OK ride, nothing special, and one that we wouldn't do that often.

Well, it turns out we do it about once a year. We did it in 2011 exactly twice (read about it here and here). Yesterday was our 2013 trip.

On the bright side, the actual connector trail that actually connects the path from the east gates of Banff Park to the west end of Canmore officially opened this morning. The Town of Canmore did quite a nice job on this "new" start of the trail, including putting up a big board that tells you how many people are using the trail. They started it from the Provincial Visitor Information Centre, which has a fair amount of parking.

But the nicest part about this is that the bike crazies no longer ride down Harvie Heights Road, meaning that terrible bicyclist behaviour is no longer something I have to deal with -- for the trail etiquette that I have complained about in the past is still there. Trail users still:

• Ride side by side and won't give you space to pass in either direction;
• Generally don't call out they are passing you, so maniacs go hurtling by and startle you;
• Stop randomly and block the path;
• Commonly don't wear helmets.

The riding is no more fun, and with the damage done by the floods, now is just a bit more dangerous, as there are spots where you are on the shoulder of the TransCanada, riding west right next to traffic driving east going 120 km/hr (in the 90 zone).

We're having a late summer heatwave, it was a good day to do the ride in 30° sunshine.

From the one stopping point on the trail

One thing that's affecting the trail is the new channel of the Cascade River. Normally, there is no river. It goes through a power plant. But the power plant has been broken since the floods, so they river is bypassing the plant and running in its old channel. A portion of the trail used to go in that channel.

The Cascade River going under the tracks 

Serious flow in the culvert

While Canmore has seriously improved their end of the trail, Banff has done nothing. The trail still just "stops".

The literal "end" in Banff

It's been 2 years. Canmore managed to get 4 km of new path built. Banff hasn't even put up signs to tell you how to get through town.

As usual, we worked our way through town, and rode all the way down Vermillion Lakes Road.

Some fall colour on the shores 

Classic Mt. Rundle 

More 

Dramatic afternoon lighting 

The Sundance range 

Reflections

In total, from our house, we rode 52 km round trip in just under 4 hrs (with lots of stops), which included 1,000 m of going up and down in a 100 m window of altitude. We learned that you can stop in at the Banff hospital to fill water bottles.

It was a nice, if hot, afternoon. The ride back was fast, as usual, since there was a tailwind and it's sort of downhill. So we are once again glad we did it, and will return next year to ride it again.

But only once.

Burstall & South Burstall Redux

We were last up Burstall Pass in 2009. Eager to show my friend Monty the best of K-Country, we headed up her today on a route very similar to our 2009 excursion, with one major exception: we walked the whole thing, and did not use bikes. That may seem trivial to you, but the bikeable 3.5 km took us 2 hrs to walk back and forth today, when we biked it in less than an hour in 2009. So our day was a long one. We started walking at 10 AM, and 20.8 km later, we finished at 6:20 PM.

It got off to a good start though; we saw a moose on the roadside on the way down.

A horse? No. 

Lady moose, chewing

The perfect blue skies excited us, but by 11 AM, grey clouds had socked in.

The Robertson Glacier 

Crossing the plain

Getting across the glacial outwash plain in the morning was pretty easy, despite some "significant hazards".

Not the trail I would use 

The lake before the re-entry to the forest

We were readily able to rock hop the numerous creeks in the AM, and avoid the lake, by just doing a bit of exploring.

By noon, the clouds basically gave up, and the sun started winning -- at least in the sky coverage department. A brisk west wind kept it feeling cool as we climbed.

Looking back. Mts Birdwood, Pigs Tail & Commonwealth

The fall colours have already set upon the ground cover, but the larches have not yet started to turn.

Reds in the grass

Looking toward South Burstall Pass. Sir Donald still clouded

We cleared the pass, and headed to the Leaman Lake overlook (in Banff Park) for lunch.

Leaman Lake

Looking north up Spray Valley

From here, we headed south toward South Burstall Pass, with Snow Peak (a popular scramble) looking over us.

Snow Peak behind us 

The pass and Mt.Sir Douglass ahead

It's not a long or hard trudge up to the south pass. But it's worth it.

The Spray River & Palliser Pass 

Mt. Sir Douglas 

A close up on her glaciers 

Looking back at (l to r) Snow, Smuts, Birdwood, Pigs Tail

At 3 PM, we finally left the south pass to head back. At 4:30 PM, the glacial outwash plain was a might bit tougher than it was in the morning, with at least 3 more inches of water in every channel that widened them and created new stream flows to get through.

The glacier again

We had a few places we had trouble finding crossings for, including a 70' wide swamp of flowing muck.

So we wasted a bunch of time trying to find creek-hoppable routes, when we probably should have just sucked it up and waded the freezing cold, muddy water. On second though, that's probably why we didn't.

Confed, and the last of the streams.

It was a nice hike, and a great place, but a LONG hike, and a tiring one. Next time, bikes.

Rain

I used to like rain.

I grew up loving to watch thunderstorms roll in over the Ontario countryside from the safe confines of a glider hanger. As as glider pilot, towering cumulus clouds thrashing and billowing in the sky were a joy to watch, and meant fun flying. A layer of low stratus may have prevented flying but sure was interesting to watch or listen to roll off the walls of my tents, tent trailer, or house trailer as we would hunker inside playing cards, drinking beer, sharing flying stories (or hiking stories, if we hiding from the rain while out on the trails).

Now rain has other meaning. On my new nascent forest and as-yet incompletely grown-in back yard, heavy rain means rivers of mud flowing towards my house, as happened last night.

Water breeches the retaining wall 

A muddy creek flows around the house, as designed

Rain now means "the basement could flood". Rain now means I could spend another month tearing wallboard out, and putting it back. We have worked hard at improving the drainage, but rain is a reminder that my basement walls still leak. Rain is a message to check the sump to see if water is coming in via the weeping tiles. Rain is a constant test of whether the fixes we did are good enough. Rain in an experiment as to whether the eavestroughs are all cleared and working.

It's interesting to watch the Facebook comments of the people in the Bow Valley now as a heavy rain event like the one we're currently having occurs. Will the creeks overflow again? Will the culverts block? Will there be evacuations? Did the temporary repairs the towns and MD put in place do their jobs?

Six months ago, a forecast of 50-70 mm of rain in a day would have been looked at as an annoyance -- no mountain biking or hiking for a day. The flood changed that. During the June flooding event, we had 200-300 mm in a 48 hr period, and it wiped out a portion of our world. Now we ask, "What will half of that do?"

We get to wait and see. The waiting is the hard part. Sadly, we all now are trained experts in flood response.

Reforestation

When we volunteer with the Bow Valley Stewards or the Friends of Kananaskis, we commonly refer to it as "gardening in the woods". We pull out unwanted plants like noxious weeds, or tear up the forest to build trails. Sometimes, we do the opposite, planting trees at wildlife overpasses to make them more appealing for wildlife, or in the middle of rogue trails to make them "go away".

Karen always jokes that we do that kind of work as volunteers but never do it at home.

Well, it was time to change that. For the last year, my yard has been a disaster. It started way back here with the first of the heavy equipment digging a new basement section, and got worse here just before the floods started when we finally re-graded the yard. I threw down some grass seed after the floods as a temporary measure to stabilize the soil until we could fix things properly.

This week was "fix things properly" week. We planted a total of 10 trees, plus a bunch of other stuff, including a small collection of native alpine flowers. We got all our plants at Bow Point Nursery, who specialize in nothing but local, native plants grown from seed without irrigation. In the end, we did plant one non-native tree (a Siberian Larch), but we have 3 of them already and even Bow Point sells them.

My car could only carry about 6 trees at a time, so we took 2 days to do the work. Our friend Monty helped us on the first day.

Monty and I digging holes 

Some stuff in and finished on Day 1

We had already planted 3 sub-alpine fir that we rescued from a trail building project we did last week. We pulled them out and were going to throw them into the forest to die, but instead brought them home in a bucket and planted them.

At the end of planting day 2 

My nascent forest

After we were done, I threw some more grass seed in the bare patches we created, and also where the original seed had not taken well. We also added some more organic rich covering in places where our yard is clay and rock. Digging the holes, I was astounded at the variability of the soil in my yard. We found black organic stuff, sand, clay, gravel and rock, and everything in-between.

In total, we planted:

• A Douglas Fir. I have one that is 60' tall. Now I have one 4' tall, too;
• A Tamarack and a Siberian Larch. Both turn beautiful yellow and lose their needles in the fall. The tamarack is more typical in eastern Canadian, but this is the western limit of its range. Larches are beautiful trees, but the high alpine Lyall's larch that we see on the trails here doesn't grow below 1,800 m altitude (we're at 1,375 m);
• 2 Paper Birch and 2 River Birch. I already have a VERY happy 30' tall River Birch that the birds love and turns pretty fall colours, too;
• 2 Dwarf Poplar. These poplar don't sucker, don't grow too high, and get nice and bushy;
• 3 rescued sub-alpine fir. They're really small right now, and came from 1,700 m in a dense, damp forest. Here's hoping they survive;
• 3 shrubby cinquefoil, better known as native potentilla. We have some hybrid potentilla in the front yard that don't ever flower. These will;
• A green alder. Alder like some shade and damp ground, and get very dense;
• 2 blackbud willows. These have bright red stems all winter, and the birds love them;
• A Louise willow. Actually from a seed source in Lake Louise.

There's also 4 or 5 trembling aspens growing up in the middle of everything from suckers of an aspen tree I have. We'll let them grow as long as they don't bug us. The grass underneath it all is native sheep fescue, which doesn't need mowing and doesn't get more than 6" high.

So in short, we now have a zero maintenance yard.

In about 5 years, we should have a genuine forest. Until then, it looks pretty nice anyway, and will offer a mix of sun and shade, cool colours in our short fall season, and let in lots of winter sunshine. We may continue to transplant in baby pine trees that grow like weeds in our hamlet (I have at least 5 in the front yard to pick from, all a foot tall) if my forest needs more.

All that's left is to finish the fence and build a big gate. That's a project for next week.