When will Lake Louise melt?

Spring comes late in the Rockies, and when the lakes start to melt, you know that summer is around the corner.  We've been keeping track of the melting date of Lake Louise for 20 years, and the range is quite surprising.  The earliest “ice off” date we've recorded is May 25, and the latest is June 13!

Lake Louise on May 19, 2013

If you're curious about when the lake will be ice free this year, you can watch from home – the Chateau Lake Louise has installed a web-cam on their rooftop!  It looks down and across the lake, and updates every few minutes for a realtime view of the lake.  As we write (May 19 at 10:30 a.m.), the current photo clearly shows full ice coverage.  You can see the outlines of the half-dozen rinks that were used for the pond hockey tournament in February, and if you look along the right hand side of the lake, the thick white stripe is the cross-country ski trail from earlier this winter.

What's your vote for when the ice will come off the lake?

Grizzly Bears and the Wonders of GPS

The middle of March hardly seems like the time to talk bears, especially as it snows and blows among the high peaks of Lake Louise, but the first of Banff's grizzly bears will be awakening any day now.

And for some of those bears, Parks Canada will know the exact moment they emerge from their dens, courtesy of some high tech jewelry.  No, it's not Piaget, it's GPS.

Last summer, Steve Michel, Banff National Park's lead grizzly bear researcher, fitted eleven of the park's grizzlies with GPS collars.  This is the first time this technology has been used systematically in the park, and already, it is revealing more about how bears use the landscape than any past studies.

In 2012, those collars beamed up over 19,000 locations, showing where the bears are spending their time.  Among their favourite places were parts of Banff and Kootenay that burned in wildfires in 2001 and 2003.  These spots have rich berry crops in mid-summer.  Another hotspot was the headwaters of the Cascade River in the heart of Banff's backcountry, which offers secure habitat away from people.

Crossing the Wapta

The most surprising finding from the study was one male grizzly bear who crossed the Wapta Icefield three times!  Steve Michel thinks the bear found it the most direct route from Banff National Park to the Blaeberry Valley in British Columbia.  We've skied up on the Icefield ourselves, and it is the last place we'd expect to see a bear.

By summer's end the GPS collars had revealed the size of each bear's range, how often each bear had crossed the railway (a major risk for bears), and last but not least, when and where the bears went into hibernation in the fall.  The earliest of the bunch went to bed on October 12, and the last of the eleven to den up hit the hay on December 3.

We'll look forward to what the GPS collars reveal this summer.  Watch for an update in the fall.

Cross-country Skiing in Lake Louise

Our focus in Lake Louise is guided snowshoeing and guided hiking, but there's another great way to travel around here: cross-country skiing.  It's snowing as I write this, which means excellent conditions for skiing. The season here lasts from November until the die-hards put away their skis in the spring.  We've cross-country skied as late as early May!

Last week, the Calgary Herald sent a reporter and videographer up to Lake Louise, and put together a great piece about the ski trails and the Parks Canada grooming team.  Read about it here and if you want any advice about skiing in our neighbourhood, give us a call or send us a message.  Even though we don't lead cross-country trips ourselves, we'd be happy to tell you about trails, instructors, and ski rentals.

The Year of the Cat

Remote camera footage courtesy of Parks Canada

According to the Chinese horoscope, we are officially in the year of the snake, but you wouldn't know it here in Banff National Park.  In January, a family of cougars were caught on the park's wildlife cameras, working their way through a deer they'd hunted on the outskirts of the town of Banff.  And here in Lake Louise, our local lynx and her now ten-month-old kitten have been making a big splash through February.  We've seen them on a snowshoeing tour, there's been numerous roadside sightings, and many skiers have caught a glimpse of them crossing the runs at the Lake Louise ski area.

Photo courtesy of Alex Taylor, Parks Canada

But the best sighting came from our friend Alex Taylor, who works for Parks Canada as a wildlife-conflict specialist. A few weeks ago, while patrolling the TransCanada highway, Alex saw the two lynx trying to get across the road.  He and the highways crew stopped traffic, and then the cats decided to put on a show by going through the fence, rather than climbing it.  The mesh is just over six inches by six inches, and yet these two lynx proved to be real contortionists.  They squeezed their heads through first, then one leg and shoulder, then the other leg and shoulder, and finally, the hips and back legs.

Nadine showcasing the 6.5 X 6.5 inch mesh of the fence

The park gave us permission to post one of Alex's excellent photos.  If you want to see the full sequence of shots, the Parks Canada facebook page is lynx central.

There has been concern about the lynx not being stopped by the fence, but this is the first documented case of them fitting through the mesh. The fencing is very successful at keeping wildlife off the roads most of the time, and in March, 2012, a lynx crossed the highway using one of the wildlife overpasses, another first.

It's truly been The Year of the Cat.  Take it, Al Stewart.

Wildlife Crossings in the News

People often ask us “do the wildlife crossings in Banff actually work?”  The obvious answer is yes: tens of thousands of large mammal crossings have been recorded in the park over the past 15 years, and the fencing along the highway keeps most animals off the road.

Wildlife overpass in Banff National Park

A harder question to answer is this one: “Are they cost-effective?”  According to a report by the Miistakis Institute, who study highway safety, the answer is yes. Near Dead Man's Flats, just outside of Banff National Park, a three kilometre section of highway was fenced in 2004, and outfitted with a wildlife underpass. Since then, the number of crashes between cars and animals has dropped considerably, and that means society has saved a lot of money.  Insurance claims are way down, and when people and animals aren't hurt, we are all winners.

Wildlife underpass, Banff National Park

The Miistakis report has inspired the transportation department in Alberta to look at other highways in the province, to see if they are good candidates for fences and underpasses.  If you drive through Crowsnest Pass in southern Alberta, there's a good chance you'll see wildlife-saving measures on Highway #3 in the future.

Surprising sights in Lake Louise

Yesterday, our snowshoeing group got a very rare treat.  Just a few minutes into our tour, a female lynx and her 9-month old kitten strolled across the trail in front of us.  They were just far enough away that photos were pretty much impossible, but it was a very exciting moment for everybody.  Apparently, over the weekend, a few more people got lucky enough to see the pair, including wildlife photographer Duane Starr.  He caught the two lynx with his long camera lens.

Lynx sightings are impossible to predict, but fabulous ice carvings are easier to find. The annual “Ice Magic” contest finished up yesterday on the shores of Lake Louise.

This year's entries are excellent, and they should stay in really good condition for viewing for about a week or ten days (weather dependent!).  Come for a visit and see how ice can be turned into art, and don't forget your camera!

New Year's Brunch, Wildlife Style

On our snowshoeing tours on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, we got to see two rare examples of how the wildlife were celebrating the season by feasting.

Joel and his group saw a short-tailed weasel dash across the trail with a mouse in its mouth.  It was all too quick for a photo, but on the internet photo sharing site Pixdaus, we found a great shot of another weasel carrying its meal.

In their winter coats, weasels are called ermines, and even though they only weigh 60 or 90 grams (2 to 3 ounces), they can take on prey as large as snowshoe hares.

Photo by Nadine Fletcher

Yesterday, Nadine and her group came across some beautiful traces in the snow where an owl had swooped down, and then plunged into the snow.  It was probably after a mouse as well, and had dug right through the snowpack in pursuit of its meal.  Snow photography is tricky, but the feather marks from both the tail and wings are clearly visible.

Happy New Year!