What was I thinking?

Yesterday, we went on another snow shoe adventure. A bit longer than I anticipated and I guess I can hike 12 km but snowshoeing 12 kilometres is a lot more work. It was 6 km UP a mountain and 6 km down. I have to say when we got to a sign that said we still had 2.7 km to go I thought oh-oh we are no where near finished. We still had to reach the top and then do all the 6 km to return. We met a couple cross-country skiing down.... when we were about 1/2 way up the trail we saw fresh prints on their ski-tracks. I was certain they were fresh wolf tracks (not coyote) and I looked in my Animal Tracks book and it looks as though they may well be wolf. The area we were in is well known as the home of the Bow Valley wolf pack. I was praying all day that we would see them....but whatever made the tracks stayed far away from us. We do carry bear spray as advised by Parks Canada (no bears but cougars and elk and moose can be deterred with the spray).

 

If anyone can confirm that this is a wolf print, I would be grateful. 

I love the chiaroscuro effect of light - the mountains often look like an etching or a charcoal sketch.

You can see the sign at the Inkpots holding me up when we finally reached the upper valley (I think it might be what is called a hanging valley....a high valley in the middle of several mountains). At this point all I could think of was 6km still ahead of me....

The Inkpots are a series of three ponds created by hot springs. This area is above Johnston Canyon - probably one of the biggest tourist spots in the Rockies - closed in the winter.

A photo of a saucy Whiskey Jack talking to us. 

Then a heart of ice on one of the ponds.

Finally the road home. I was in bed with heating pads by 7 pm and all is well today...though I am not going very far from the couch.

Road trip to snowshoeing

What a day! Darrell and Mojo's snowshoeing adventure.....Charley couldn't come this time but we will get him out on snowshoes yet.

We headed out to Bow Summit - which is past Lake Louise on the road to Jasper...but still in Banff National Park. The skies were grey but it was beautiful and the clouds were interesting.

Then you see me in my snowshoes and off we go up, up, up through the trees. You can see from one of the photos of Darrell that it was steep in parts.

Darrell was very kind and he broke the trail when we were in new snow & it was deep snow too as I found out when I lost a snowshoe and went in up to my thigh. That is Peyto Lake way down in the valley. Several photos of it....Then we met the grouchy grouse. It was a Spruce Grouse that followed us along part of the trail. Habituated to being fed by tourists no doubt, he came right up to us and made very interesting sounds - a sort of purring-clicking sound. When we didn't feed him he seemed to get cross and he got on the back of Darrell's snowshoes and started pecking at his legs. I didn't get any photos of him attacking us....

We met him again on the way back and he started pecking at me. He was either being territorial or he really was mad we didn't feed him.

There is a photo of Bow Lake in a whiteout on the way back. The driving was not that bad...just that one spot where the wind swept across the lake. 

Tuckered out tonight after a wonderful mountain snowshoe trek.

Hope to go out again next week.

Silver from blue

There was blue sky and Vermillion Lakes were calling to me. I had finished reading an astounding novel called Swimming Home (and finished writing my review of it) so I answered the call of the sky and mountains. I took photos of hte brilliant blue sky, the mountains clad snow and then the clouds blew in from the west and everything turned silver and grey - but still beautiful. These are a few of the pictures....including one which shows another photographer on second lake.

The first four pictures are of the Fairmont range in the east. Then grey cloaked Mt.Rundle. Then the photo with the open water and the photgrapher show the westerly view. The next photo shows waves of silver water which were whipped up by a brisk wind. 

I live in the mountains.

Why is she writing that you wonder...because it is still an amazement to me. 

 While the winter dormancy of Vermillion Lakes is beautiful, I so look forward to the spring and the beaver pond area being full of warblers and kinglets - so many of them it is like a swarming of bees.

And, I long for the return of the pair of kestrels to their nest in the hollow tree, the bald eagles, the herons, the migrating swans and all the ducks and the pair of loons.....

I thought I might spy a moose today - I have seen two out here in the past year - but I didn't. 

Still it was a glorious afternoon.