Starry Starry Night

We had a scheduled power outage in Lake Louise a couple of nights ago, and when the lights went out at 10:00 p.m., we went for a walk in the starlight.  Wow!  Orion was bright in the sky, and with binoculars, we peered into the Orion Nebula and into the nearby Pleiades star cluster.

Winter is star season in the Rockies, and if you want to enjoy incredible night skies without light pollution, here are a few helpful tips:

Jasper National Park was recently declared a “Dark Sky Preserve” by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and you can go on guided star walks on Saturday nights throughout the winter.

Pyramid Lake, Jasper National Park.  Photo by Thomas Pleiss.

To help you figure out what you're looking at, you can buy an amazing $3 app for your i-pad or i-phone called “Star Walk”

To catch the northern lights, subscribe to "aurora watch", and you'll get real time updates of likely aurora borealis.

And finally, we'll be doing a night snowshoe trip from the Lake Louise Inn on December 28 starting at 6:00 p.m.  It will be a full moon, so the stars won't be as easy to see, but snowshoeing in the full moon is magical!

Photographer Amar Athwal

Northern Harrier in flight.  Photograph by Amar Athwal

A couple of years ago, we decided to give ourselves a weekly gift.  We signed up to receive emails that feature the photographs of a colleague of ours, Amar Athwal.  Amar lives and works in Banff for Parks Canada, and is a wizard with a camera.  The weekly photos he sends out are always a welcome sight in our inbox.

Amar explains how he took up his hobby: “Some eighteen years ago I started to take pictures while on hikes, today photography is the way I experience nature and it's the way I capture the moments I come across.”  His photos are the culmination of a lot of experience, a lot of hard work, and a very good eye.

If you want to give yourself an early Christmas present, without spending a penny, you can sign up for Amar's weekly “Moments” by e-mailing him at warmlight@gmail.com.  Or, for a sneak preview, try his website.

The Snoring Hummingbird

Male amethyst-throated Sunangel in Ecuador.  Photo by Patty McGann

Last night we were listening to “As it Happens” on CBC, and their sound of the day was – are you ready for this? – a snoring hummingbird! Today, we found out a a bit more about the story behind the sounds.  It was a female Amethyst-throated Sunangel, native to the northern Andes in South America.  It had been captured by biology researchers who wanted to study the bird's oxygen uptake while it slept.

Many hummingbird species go into torpor overnight as a way to preserve energy, especially if they live in cold places.  The rufous hummingbird, which shows up in the Canadian Rockies for the summer, is a torpor specialist, and the Sunangel lives high enough in the Andes that it needs this strategy too.  These hummingbirds drop their heart rate, body temperature and their respiratory rate to get through the night.  But now you can add to the list at least one species that snores!

And by the way, the bird was released back into the wild the next morning.

Skating Season

Our summer hiking season ended in September and we were away for much of October and now, having returned from a beautiful eastern fall, we are anxiously awaiting skating season:  our chance to glide over entire ponds and lakes, unimpeded.

It isn't guaranteed.  To have a skating season, we need the right combination of cold temperatures and no snow.  We've only been able to skate on the full body of Lake Louise in about five or six of the 20 years we've lived here.  And sometimes only for one day!

Skating on a frozen mountain lake is an amazing experience.  If you are lucky the ice will be very smooth, and almost always there are gorgeous star-like crystals sticking up.  Patterns in the ice catch your eye - waves, bubbles, cracks.

Joel will skate on ice that is only three inches thick, but Nadine prefers something closer to six inches!  This Banff National Park video will give you a flavour for the speed, the sounds and the crisp, cold air.

Prepare to Hibernate!

We've had a pretty nice run of Indian summer weather this last two weeks, but there is no stopping the passage of time.  Birds have been flocking up and heading south, pikas and squirrels have been laying in supplies, and last week, we saw some very fat hoary marmots making their last visit to the alpine salad bar.

Hoary marmot

By this time of the year, the grass isn't just for eating.   This chunky marmot at Lake O'Hara was clearly collecting grass to use as nesting material.  I guess if you're going to sleep for eight months, you want to do so in comfort.  The last of the marmots will be out for the count before the end of September, and the next time we'll see them will be in June.

Sweet dreams.

Moose on the Stanley Glacier trail

Last week, we had a rare close encounter with a moose while hiking.  Since the big fires of 2003, the Stanley Glacier trail has great moose and bear habitat.  We often tell people this is the case, but it's great when the moose show up to prove it!

This young female moose showed real fondness for fireweed, and then wandered off through the downed forest, showcasing how good moose are at travelling through deadfall.

Frightening Fungus

A few days ago, we led a guided hike to Paget Lookout in Yoho Park, and on the way down, we found a great patch of mushrooms.  Our guests snapped a beautiful shot (thanks David!), and we admired the fungus.  I misidentified it as dead-man's fingers, but on checking at home, discovered that this mushroom is called “purple fairy club.”  Who knew that fairies were so vicious?

Common names are always a little problematic when it comes to mushrooms, and this species proves the point, as it is found throughout Europe.  Here's a list of the common names from both North America and across the pond:

Purple coral
Purple fairy club
Purple spindles
Purple squid mushroom
Kyjanka purpurová (Czech)
Purpurgrå køllesvamp (Danish)
Purppuranuijakkaat Purppura (Finnish)
Clavaire pourprée (French)
Purpurfarbige (German)
Gråfiolett køllesopp (Norwegian)
Goździeniec purpurowy (Polish)
Клавария пурпурная (Russian)
Kyjačik purpurový (Slovak)
Luddfingersvamp (Swedish)

Using “Google translate,” we found the following translations: “Gray-violet bat fungus”, “Lint finger fungi”, and “Kyjačik purple.”

The one thing they all agree on?  The Latin name is Alloclavaria purpurea.  The one thing we're sure of?  Learning Finnish would be very difficult.