Skyline Trail (day two)

The next morning on the Skyline Trail we woke up to sunshine, which was a relief as I was not looking forward to wet camping gear for the next week.

Our plan was to day hike the whole of the trail and end up back at our same campsite, necessitated by the lack of open campsites further along despite reserving months in advance. This is one of the highest acclaimed and popular trails in the Canadian Rockies. It was actually nice that it turned out this way, since we could day-hike the trail without heavy packs, and see it from both directions.

The trail exited the trees and went through some beautiful meadows in the “Snowbowl” (now snow-free) on the way up to Little Shovel Pass

I liked these blue pinecones

This time of year there were lots of wildflowers blooming

Then it was over Little Shovel and up to Big Shovel Pass

through Curator basin and steeply up to “The Notch”. This part of the trail was very alpine, very scenic, and very exposed

From The Notch

we could see down into another valley, framed by a different range of mountains

Also along this spine of the Maligne Range there was some amazing fractured rock

and still more cool wildflowers further down into the valley

The trail kind of ambiguously wound through meadows and along a beautiful river, where we stopped for lunch

It was a delicious smorgasbord of mac & cheese (the good kind with the waxy pre-made cheez sauce). The mosquitos were attacking but with the help of friend 100% pure-toxic Deet we were able to ignore them.

We walked a little farther, past Tekkarra campground, below Tekarra, Signal, Excelsior, and Signal mountains, until we decided to turn around for the long trek back to camp.

Luckily the weather held out for us

and on the way we saw this fat marmot

 

The walk back was nice and not too difficult. We probably walked about 25 miles this day, but without packs, through such amazing environments, and with a full lunch of mac & cheese we hardly noticed the distance.

The trail was fantastic in its mix of alpine terrain, meadows, and forest. It was a great way to see some of the best parts of Jasper NP, I can see why it is so popular. But I would actually choose to hike it the way we did, rather than as a traditional through-hike.

 

biff

It seems like I fall while running about once per year, which is only ~ part-per-million catastrophically defective steps. That’s not so bad I guess. This time I got circular scratches on my hands so I’ve been telling people at work that I have stigmata.

Jasper Park and Skyline Trail (day one)

We left Deadmonton a little later than originally planned, but after an easy 2.5 hr drive in our awesome rental Fusion bumpin’ satellite radio, we were at the gates of Jasper National Park. While in line to get into the park we saw a little family of bighorn sheep on the side of the road, presumably welcoming visitors to Jasper. We drove across the plains for a couple hundred km and then, almost instantly, we were in beautiful alpine scenery like this:

and this (where we ate our lunch, roast beef au jus for me):

We thought this was a moose, but in hindsight I think it’s an caribou elk:

We drove the Maligne Lake Road to the start of our hike, the famous Skyline trail. This road was a buffet of wildlife spottings. First there were two full-antlered caribou Talia says it’s an elk:

Black bear:

Traffic-causing bighorn sheep:

and the exotic “deer”:

all to be enjoyed from the comfort of your car with seat-warmers and satellite radio.

We started our hike on the Skyline trail around 4pm, but we only had to go ~7 miles and it was light until well after 9pm.

We ran into this mountain ptarmigan on the way

then it started to rain rain rain! We were a bit soaked when we got to our campsite (Little Shovel). We made a couscous and Indian food dinner while hiding from the rain and the mosquitos. Only later did we realize that we ate twice our allotment of couscous! Our tent is only marginally waterproof, so we hoped for better weather the next day or it was going to be a soggy trip.

Edmonton and environs

Midway through the conference week, 50 of my closest meteoriticist friends and I took an “excursion” to see a recreated Ukrainian village and *drive* through Elk Island National Park. We were served some borscht and hot dogs at the Ukrainian village while being serenaded by authentic down-home Ukrainian hee-haw honky-tonk like Hank Williams.

Afterwards we got a tour of the grounds, which included this grain elevator

which is every bit as awesome as it looks.

On our bus ride through the park we saw some bison which was pretty cool

including a baby bison

But alas, we couldn’t get out of the bus to pet them nor were we allowed to take one of the baby bison home. I tried to convince people that the bison claimed trees to eat the leaves on top, was moderately successful.

Edmonton is sometimes referred to as “Deadmonton” or “Canadian Houston”, but…there was nice running on the river so that’s good enough for me.

the dog whisperer

Cesar Millan is a P.O.S.

Alberta to Honolulu

It’s been an exciting last month, getting ready for a conference, spending a weekend in Seattle, a week in Edmonton, an amazing week in the Canadian Rockies, and then lots of time on the instruments since we’ve been back in Hawaii. And last week I got to watch a lot of the T&F World Championships in Moscow (starting at 5:00am which actually wasn’t that inconvenient). Americans medaled in men’s and women’s 800 AND 1500 — how about that? It was really sad to see a Kenyan just miss a medal in the javelin (“Kenya’s best placing in a field event before this was 15th in the Triple Jump qualification”). He placed much higher than Kenya’s marathoners. Highlist

I’ve finished posting pictures from the Rockies and a trip report is coming soon.