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Banff's backcountry,
through the eyes of a geographer |
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For a city
dweller like me, there is no describing the
feeling of sleeping in the backcountry after
walking 20 or 30 km to get to your site. It is
truly awesome to stand, at night, surrounded by
peaks rising some 5 to 6 Thousand feet above you,
the moon casting its light, and with silence so
deep that you have the impression it hurts your
ears. |
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My journey
began some years ago when I worked in Banff for a season.
Through these pictures I can show you a bit of what I saw
and learned while hiking in the backcountry. |
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| Here is a view
of Moraine
Lake.
I'm standing on what is believed to be a moraine,
hence the name of the lake. Actually, Lake Louise
seems to also owe its existence to a moraine that
dammed the glacial melt water coming from the
small glacier nestled at the hilt of the valley. |
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Did you
know that the color of the water in many of the lakes in
Banff and Jasper is caused by the silt contained in the
melting glacier water that feed them, reflecting sunlight
in just the right way? In spring, and when it is
overcast, the water is crystal clear. So, to get that
color, you need sunshine and a glacier's silt leaden
meltwater. |
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Spray
River
is just south of Banff Springs Hotel. From a
geographical or geomorphologic points of view,
you can see that the river cut right through
geological rock formations that poke out of the
river bed at an angle, showing the erosive
capabilities of running water and also the forces
that come into play during mountain building. |
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| A classic
image of Moraine Lake and the Valley of the
Ten Peaks. These are the peaks on our 20$ bill.
Moraine Lake is about 20 km from Lake Louise and
yet it attracts a fraction of the sightseers that
go to the park. There is a lot of great hiking in
this area. |
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There is also
great hiking and superb scenery in Sentinel Pass. This pass separates
the valley where Moraine Lake lies from a valley
called Paradise Valley. As I recall, at the crest
of the pass, you stood at over 8000 feet. |
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| From that
altitude you can see mountains for miles. As we
looked back from where we stood, we could see The
Valley
of The Ten Peaks. Once at the valley we looked down
towards the main Bow River valley. |
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Many of the
valleys like Sunshine, Ten Peaks, etc. perched
over the Bow River Valley are perpendicular to
it. When those valleys where carved by glaciers
there was a main glacier flowing down in the Bow
and many tributaries flowed into it. |
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The
geomorphologies of those valleys are dead give-aways.
When you drive down the parkway you notice the valley
bottom is flat and has rounded edges and there are many
valleys opening at right angle to the main one but a
thousand feet higher up. That is so because the main
glacier, being bigger and heavier than those that lead
into it, gauged much deeper into the rock. |
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| Peaceful
hiking in an alpine meadows atop the Sunshine ski
resort. If you're adventurous, you can head out
into the backcountry from the alpine meadow. This
is what I did when I headed out to Assiniboine
Provincial Park. |
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That park sits
across the Alberta border in B.C. It is also
across the continental divide. It's a small park
that has its namesake Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park. Its
particularity is that its summit looks like a
pyramid and it seems to stand out like a sentinel
among the other peaks. There is a lodge at its
base accessible only by helicopter, hiking, or
skiing. The hike to Og Lake was long and tiring but it was
rewarding. As I recall it was between 20 and 25
km of walking up and over the divide and back
down into B.C. |
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It is also
a great cross-country ski trail, but not for the
faint-hearted. I can still remember hiking down a very
steep pass and traversing an also very steep avalanche
prone slope and being very happy to be across. |
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| There are
beautiful images around the Columbia Ice
Fields.
As you near the Ice Fields the landscape becomes
barren and desolate. Trees thin out, rock fields
and glaciers appear. The air has a bite to it.
The Youth Hostels that can be found along the
Parkway cater to cross-country skiers in winter. |
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The
hostels offer modest accommodations with little or no
amenities. They usually have a sauna so you can wash and
a kitchen to cook your meals. You go to bed early, rise
early and leave early. |
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One of my
more memorable experiences was when I hiked in the
backcountry some 20 Km past Mount Norquay. I made it to
the designated area for camping and pitched my tent. Park
attendants came by around supper time to warn campers to
be careful with food and other smelly stuff because
grizzlies were sighted in the area and we should be
careful not to attract them to our site. I did as
suggested and went off to bed. Sleep doesn't come easy in
bear country. You tend to be overly preoccupied by any
sound you hear. I eventually did fall asleep. I was woken
up by my friend some time later because she kept hearing
growling sounds. Tents are a pain in those situation
because rip-stop nylon is not much of a match for a
hungry grizzly and with the fly over the tent you cannot
see out unless you open the door. So, there we were,
holding our breaths and waiting to hear were the sound
was coming from and what it might be when suddenly, we
heard growling again, in the tent. It was my stomach... |
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