Wednesday, September 1, 2010: Last night the rain came back and raged and raged against the little cabin, although I only woke up twice, once at around 1:30am and again at 6am and only managed to fall back to sleep around 7am when I asked Larry to wake me up. Today's agenda was to take off from Glacier and drive back north, past Banff up to Lake Louise where I stay at the Deer Park Hotel for 3 nights. This was a bit of a splurge, I wanted a hot tub if I was going to be doing all these strenuous hikes all day long, so I booked some luxury for the Canadian leg of the trip. I could have booked one of the Glacier historic lodges, like Many Glacier, which is really gorgeous, but the pickings are limited, I wasn't sure where to stay (next time I'd do the west side of the park) but after this freezing little cabin in the constant rain, a bathroom that was actually IN the room sounded like a luxury.
By 7:30am the car was packed and we were both ready to take off. It was still raining in the park, the same persistent light rain it seemed to be for 3 days straight, and cold. Bone-chilling cold. Breakfast was leftover pizza takeout from last night with coffee from the little cafe. Larry checked out, and we left. Right on the exit to the Swiftcurrent camp ground across from the lodge, a family of mom and 2 yearling deer were eating one of the bushes and seemed oblivious to the car. I got one lousy shot, for being prey animals to the predators, I was afraid for their safety if they were so unconcerned with a car so close by, but it was hard to get them to even look up, let alone get a decent shot. The yearlings still have their white spots on the coat.
We drove out of town, back up to Calgary which is a completely straight shot, one-highway deal all the way up to town, then you take HWY 1 off to Banff. The drive itself wasn't exciting, took about 4.5 hours and wasn't eventful until we got to Banff National Park entrance. People live in the park year round, it's a year-round high end super charming tourist mecca for Canadians, a lot like Aspen. Skiing in winter is the rage, hiking in summer, and I taught Larry the phrase "apres-ski" which is now colloquially used for "apres-hiking." The "scene" in Banff is actually a scene, much like Aspen. Apparently admission prices are rated per day, so at 5 days we paid $100 to get in. No wonder their roads are so pristine...
The scenery changes pretty dramatically on the approach and then once inside it's jaw-dropping amazing. The scale just from Glacier to here is completely different: this is the real thing. The mountains seem twice as high, and twice as majestic and the glaciers are visible on numerous peaks. It's hard to even remember this is the same mountain range. The peaks were just snow covered, the tree line seemed lower and three times as thick as it was in Glacier, and the vistas more vast. Past the entrance, you can opt to drive on the main highway, which is very, very cool: the campsites in Banff have electric fences which protect people from bears and bears from people, the highway running through the park has "wildlife proof" fences on either side (high fencing to prevent them from getting on or near the freeway) and have animal Free-Ways over or under them for passing animals and migration patterns- the fences shunt the animals along the freeway into one of the passages for them, and the can pass in safety. Those Canadians sure do a better job than we do, of course their resources for national parks and preservation are many times what ours are in the USA, a matter of simple national priority. I think of what the cost of the completely fictitious WMD scare and Iraq war could have financed had it actually gone into preservation in the US... but I digress.
You can check out the bridges and see webcams here: http://www.pc.gc.ca/banff-research. They are so successful, in fact, that the government is talking with Seattle about possibly implementing some of these wildlife bridges in the pacific northwest. They also have an updated animal sigthing log where you can check trails, see who's been sighted and where incase you want to go off the main roads and into any kind of trail: www.trailex.org.
Larry really wanted to see Banff, so we stopped off the highway and took a little trip around the town which was awesome. I know, I know, totally tourist, but I'm completely smitten with block after block of charm with this almost surreal mountain background.
The trip to Lake Louise, which is 58 kilometers north of Banff, still in Banff National Park, you can take the highway (1) or you can take 1A, which is the alternate route and this one is slow, as there is no wildlife protection and you're basically in the woods the whole time. It was a lovely drive- you are really in the forest and get a few glimpses here and there of the mountains and vistas, but the purpose is to be able to see wildlife if there is any to see. We didn't see any. Banff publishes a bear page, complete with sightings on a weekly basis. This week there were about 8 black bear sightings and 7 grizzly sightings. They have several interesting laws: when it's the high season in areas of increased risk of human/bear interaction, they make it the law that you have to hike in the backcountry trails in groups of at least 4 people and no more than 3 meters apart at all times. And like glacier, noisy as possible. Lake Louise is on the side of the areas that are being enforced now, but is not part of them. It's the end of the summer, so it's really very very high bear season, so I'm kind of freaking out. That and Larry read me the bear attack files as recorded from the 1970s all the way to Banff and it completely freaked me out.
The Banff website says there are waaay fewer bears than I thought. I swear the glacier guy said 1:3 grizzly:black and about 2,000 grizzly bears in Glacier, so about 6,000 black bears. That number, when I think about it can't possibly be true. Banff is 6,600 square kilometers in size, and there are more Grizzly bears here than there are black bears. The website says there are about 50 black bears and 50-60 grizzlies, so there is just no way there would be 6,000 bears that would be one for every square kilometer, and Glacier is smaller than Banff, so how can there be so many bears there? Glacier must have been talking about a much wider area. Or I was just confused.
The town of Lake Louise is a contrast to that of Banff, it's teeny, all hotels, and the "town" is kind of silly. One plaza, again numerous hotels, and that's about it. The hotel I booked, the Deer Park, is north of the little town itself but beautiful. Upon check in, the cashier asked if I'd care to upgrade the room for an additional sum (not small, and the room was pricey enough) and I actually said sure- so we got a room with much more space, and a balcony and view of the woods and mountain. I'm glad, since I saw a couple who booked a standard room open their door to bring their bags in and it was the size of a closet- very European. Or perhaps smaller. And those were pricey enough, I would have been very unhappy if that was it for the price I paid! So, granite bathroom and nice amenities, we were most excited about the wireless internet (Larry) and the hot tub (Shelby).
After checking in and dropping the stuff in the room, we're really close, walking distance, to Lake Louise itself so we took a short walk down the block to the magnificent Fairmont Hotel Lake Louise and milled around with all the people at the lake (there were lots). The Fairmont was built in the 1920s and was quite the mecca just like it is today. There has been a couple of renovations or additions, rather, in the 1980s to the structure and it's very grand. We went inside and walked around, there's just a huge mall of stuff in there- retail shops, a wine bar, a saloon, several restaurants, a place that serves high tea overlooking the lake, and the whole place is going for Swiss Alps. They even have guided tours going, one was an all day hike to the tea house and the plain of 6 glaciers, which I thought would be great with a guide since I was now so completely freaked out by bears. Unfortunately, none that we could take. After, we hiked up to the Fairmont Lookout Point, which is a short but very steep climb up to the mountainside over the lake with an amazing view. I was completely bear-weary the whole time as the trail is in dense woods and there were bear signs at every possible turn. We yelled a lot on the way up, and on the way down. On the way down, we heard a loud cracking in a tree just off to the left and one pine started swaying like something was climbing up in it, I was sure it was a bear that heard us coming and went up the tree, but Larry wasn't convinced.
Above Lake Louise is the mountain, and the Louise Glacier which is stunning. The lakes all have this almost unbelievable blue color that's chalky and milky and vivid, and apparently, it's because as the glaciers move, it pulverizes stone and sediment underneath into a fine "flour" that gets dumped into the water turning it this very distinctive color. Above, you see the Fairmont with the mountain in the background, and to the right the lodge from the lookout and Lake Louise.
A bear-clawed tree, and the lake with the glacier.
Above: a chandelier in the fairmont, you can see the swiss theme, and the hotel's lobby. Below is the cafe where they were serving high tea when we were visiting.
When
we went back outside, there was a bear exhibit set up with 2 park rangers (the
one doing the talking had this wonderful french canadian accent, English was
not her first language) and they had a black bear skin with them, a small crowd
had gathered to touch the bear skin and hear what she was talking about. Larry
and I were fresh out of bear-scare stories and I was just post hike so I had
a great deal of questions for this woman.
The skinned black bear had an ear tag, and had an unfortunate
story. We seem to create the monsters in the bears ourselves much of the time,
generally by leaving food out. This guy was about 5 years old and one night
down in Banff, MacDonald's left their dumpster open and he got into it. This
was very memorable for this bear, as they found him in downtown Banff foraging
again a couple of times, so the park service removed him. He came back. The
tried transporting him- 350 kilometers away, and 5 days later, he was back.
A second time, they tried transporting him this time 500 kilometers away and
again he came back 3 days later. Unfortunately, that meant they had to put the
bear down, so he was killed. Now he illustrates the importance of not leaving
food out and general vigilance necessary to keep the bears wild and not in our
spaces and not a danger to humans to park visitors, but it's still kinda sad.
We asked about recent bear activity in the area, specifically about 6 glaciers
since I wanted to go there, there's no current warning mandating hiking in groups
of 4 there, but there has been a ton of bear activity as they gear up for the
winter and eat. She said generally something was spotted daily. Yesterday, a
grizzly came down out of the woods, swam across half of the lake and got off
on the other side into the woods. Yikes. I was thinking at this point that I
was going to have to skip 6 glaciers (a 9 mile hike as it is) because I'd just
be way too freaked out.
It was dinner time, so we went down into the "town" and ate at the Lake Louise Village Grill. Woah. You walk in, and the grill is on the 2nd floor, but the lobby looks like a high school locker room and kind of smelled like one, too. We went upstairs, cracking up at this horrible place, and saw a bar (very downhome place indeed) and were seated at the restaurant, which had inexpensive food. The waitress was another Aussie who weighed about 80lbs and had this lovely, bubbly personality and was very fast took our orders (I got the lasagne and salad platter, Larry got the Salmon burger and fries). Just as we ordered, a bussload of Chinese tourists (kids, all of them) filled the place to capacity. Food came fast and was just bad. My lasagne was probably Stouffer's, and Larry's salmon patty was like a square patty straight out of MacDonald's. Inside his was actually salmon. We ate, left. The waitress was so nice and we weren't really in any mood to complain so this all seemed rather funny at the time.
Back at the Deer Park, we went up to the hot tub around 7 to find 4 other people in there, a talkative and nice couple from Toronto up for a couple days visiting. They appeared to be in their 40s, attractive people, and Larry chatted and chatted. They were going to hike the 6 glaciers tomorrow, I was disappointed I couldn't have asked if we could join them, as we had reservations to go whitewater rafting and never had the time to do 10 miles before that. Alas. The other couple in there was a lovely young couple who didn't talk much but she laughed at all of Larry's jokes visiting from Dublin, Ireland. We stayed in there a good 40 minutes before Barden who has rosacea to begin with looked something like a beet, and I was dying of heat. Nicely relaxed, we went into the hotel's bar/cafe, where our Irish friends were finishing their dinner. We sat down at the bar and I had a manhattan (with scotch!) and Larry got a martini. The bartender, Jonny, was slow and very nice but a very klutzy guy. Bumping things, spilling, fumbling, hitting his body into the counter by accident, but a very nice guy. Australian, was in finance and needed a change, so came up here from Brisbane for the past 6 weeks to be a bartender (not sure that bartending, which is a physical skill as much as anything, was the best choice for this man). We had our drinks, actually showed Jonny how to use the peeler to make a nice thin lemon rind slice (he had no idea) and not just take a chunk off the lemon peel and plunk it in the glass. Glad to have contributed to his education. We were just about the only folks in there, so we had a nice chat before we headed back to the room with one wildly expensive bar tab.
That bed is soo comfortable, I was out in no time flat (the manhattans didn't
help any) and slept until I saw the sun start to add some light to the mountainside
we're looking at through the sliding glass doors. Just before bed, I saw the
phone message light blinking, and it was a message from the rafting people,
please call them, they open at 8am tomorrow morning. I was guessing that there
weren't enough people to go on the trip, so it was probably cancelled. Too late
to find the Toronto couple to join them for their hike in the morning... shame.