The Magic World of the Snowflake

Happy New Year from Lake Louise, where, thanks to lots of snow, and very little wind, we feel like we're living inside a Christmas card. There's snow on the trees, and everything is looking very “Narnia” (before the ice queen is defeated).

photo by Sherry Ott

As a special treat, during the week leading up to Christmas, we had days in a row of gentle snowfall, in cold, very still conditions. It made for the kind of snowflakes that populate our imaginations – the perfect six-sided stellar plates that every kid in kindergarten tries to recreate with scissors and folded paper. Once the snow stopped falling, on Boxing Day, we had over a week of clear skies, and these sparkly snowflakes glinted in the sunshine during our snowshoeing tours. Everybody oohed and aahed.

Photos by Wilson Bentley, 1902

Our camera went on the fritz during the holidays, and we weren't able to record the beauty, so we went looking for photos of snowflakes, and found some terrific images online.

First, there are the historic photos of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, born just over a century ago in Vermont, and the first person to photograph closeups of snowflakes. Starting as a teenager, he jury-rigged a microscope and an early bellows camera.  After much experimentation, he managed to capture the intricate beauty of snow, taking over 5,000 snowflake photos in his lifetime.

courtesy of the USDA

Fast forward to today, and people are finding new ways to add to Bentley's ouevre. There's electron microscope images of snow, tricky macro shots, and even time lapse microphotography showing the growth of snow crystals in a lab.

This time lapse work comes courtesy of the guru of snow, physicist Kenneth Libbrecht. He takes photos much like Wilson Bentley, but in colour, and using polarized light. He's also the pioneer of home made snow in his lab. It is truly stupendous to watch, and is all available at his amazing website, snowcrystals.com.

Enjoy the show.

Cry mush, and let slip the dogs of snow!

It doesn't feel like a proper winter week in the Rockies if you don't get outdoors to do at least three different recreational activities. In the course of seven days, we'll typically tick off skating, skiing and snowshoeing.

Heading towards the Continental Divide

Megan Routley, owner of Kingmik, plus yours trulies.

Well this week, we added a new pastime into the mix: dogsledding. For over 30 years, Kingmik Dog Sled Tours has been operating in Lake Louise, and we finally joined them for a two hour trip. It was an excellent adventure: with Kingmik owner Megan Routley as our musher, host, and story-teller, we were pulled by a team of eight dogs, and, boy, do they ever love to run. We simply flew along the trail, covering 16 km at a speed that would make a cross-country skier jealous. It was a beautiful day, with snow draped on the trees, and the swish of the sled runners as the soundtrack.

It was also an interesting experience for us nature nuts, because the sled dog is a wonderful mixture of nature's handiwork and the triumph of centuries of breeding. Kingmik's pooches are all Alaskan huskies, and no two of them look alike. They are multi-coloured, and come in all sizes. We wondered, “Where are the huskies that we see in the movies, or as plush toys?” It turns out that those pretty boys are Siberian huskies, and these days they're mostly bred for looks. Alaskan huskies are bred to run, so it doesn't matter what they look like. They represent the end point of several thousand years of people's effort to create dogs that can do two things: run fast and run far. After we finished our tour, it looked like they would happily have gone out for another ten mile jaunt.

The leaders of the pack.

Megan told us that sled dogs may be the ultimate athletes. They have been the subject of physiology research (if you want some nice light reading, try “Metabolic Strategies for Sustained Endurance Exercise: Lessons from the Iditarod.”), and when in peak condition, they can put out a sustained effort of up to 250 or 300 ml/kg/min VO2 max (this is the standard measure of maximum oxygen uptake, in millilitres of oxygen per kilogram of body mass per minute). For perspective, the finest endurance athletes, like cyclists and cross-country skiers, have never been able to crack even 100 ml/kg/min VO2 max.

Along the 1A, with Mount Fairview in the background.

To be pulled through a beautiful landscape by such superbly conditioned dogs was a real treat, and we recommend it for anyone wanting to add a new winter activity to their checklist. Thanks, Megan.

Our favourite wildlife sightings of 2015, including grizzly bears!

A pine marten left its tracks in the snow on our roof this morning, reminding us of how wonderful it is to have wildlife around – it just makes life in the Rockies more... interesting.  In keeping with this idea, we look back to our favourite wildlife sightings of the year.

Let's start with harlequin ducks.  These beautiful sea ducks migrate here from the west coast every spring, and then eke out a living in our high elevation lakes and fast-flowing rivers. To see this pair courting on Moraine Lake back in May – before all the winter ice had even melted – reminded us that some harlequin romances are real!
 
Next up, at the height of summer, we saw a chipmunk. A chipmunk? How could it make the list? Well, it was beautifully perched on a sentry rock festooned with what looked like brilliant orange frosting.  Clearly, there was a story to be told here.  It turns out that certain chunks of limestone get covered with a lichen known as Xanthoria elegans, but only when those rocks have been fertilized with the droppings of birds and mammals.  It takes the concept of "mixed media" to a whole new level.

At the end of August, there was a strange bird on Bow Lake, just one metre from the shore.  It  turned out to be a phalarope (good scrabble word!), which is like a sandpiper crossed with a duck: with partly webbed feet, it can swim around on the surface of lakes and ponds.  We watched, enthralled, as it spun around like a whirling dervish., picking bugs off the surface of the lake with its delicate bill.  It turned out to be a juvenile, and was flying from the high Arctic to South America, for the first time in its life.  Wow!

Our #1 memorable wildlife sighting was on August 3, on the border of Banff and Mount Assiniboine Parks.  It's one of those places that feels special.  You look in all directions, and see nothing but high peaks and forested valleys.  It whispers “wilderness”, and since the ultimate symbol of wilderness is the grizzly bear, it was only appropriate that we were lucky enough to see one... well, three, actually: we heard a clatter, and then spied a trio of bears running down a scree slope.  Pure magic, and we managed to catch it on video.  They were kind of far away, but we hope you enjoy the show.

A Wild Rockslide

Turn that cow into a mountain goat!

Ever thought that you'd seen it all?  After over 20 years of guiding in Banff, I (Nadine) have seen a lot of amazing things, but until last weekend, I'd never seen a full-on rockslide.

I was heading up to the Plain of Six Glaciers with guests on Sunday, and all of a sudden it sounded like we were in a war zone.

With all the echoes, it took a few moments to figure out where the sound was coming from, but then we turned to look up at the side of Mount Fairview, and watched the show.

Rocks and boulders hurdled down the cliff, bouncing high into the air, and then splashed into the water.  It was truly awe-inspiring, and one of my guests had the presence of mind to film the second half of the rockslide.   Thank you Michele.

See it for yourself!

What's in a Lake? Part I

Last weekend, I went for an explore to Skoki, a hiking district just east of Lake Louise.  It's famous for its high alpine lakes, including beautiful Ptarmigan Lake, pictured here.

But high elevation lakes are more than just eye candy, as I soon discovered...

My goal was get to some small lakes I'd never visited before.  They're tucked up against Brachiopod Mountain, which means almost 16 km of hiking before you even get to your reward.

Brachiopod Lake, looking like a big... mud puddle.

The highest lake was called Brachiopod Lake.  It looked tantalizing on the map, right up at treeline, surrounded by high country scenery, but when I got there, it was... almost totally dried up. It sits in a limestone basin, and the water that fills the lake in early summer can percolate right through limestone.  So instead of a lake, I got to see a big mudflat.

Initially, I was very disappointed, but I decided to go for a walk in the mud, just for the heck of it.  And that's when I could see “what's in a lake?”

There were tracks, tons of tracks, left by everything from pikas all the way up to grizzly bears, everything that had visited the lake in the last couple of weeks.  I spent a delightful half hour of treasure hunting, and here's a photo collection of my faves from that day...

Hoary marmot tracks.

Sandpiper tracks.

Grizzly bear track.

Wolf track.

The Arnica – a Favourite and Magical Flower

The wildflowers in the Rockies are superb this summer.  We had a lot of warm weather in June and early July, to get things started, and since then, there's been cooler, damper conditions, keeping the flowers in great shape.

We recently hiked into the alpine meadows near Temple Lake, and came across a profusion of one of our favourite flowers, the arnica.  They score big points with us three counts: first, they're beautiful; second, they have an unbeatable fragrance (but not in the flower!); and third, they come with a great interpretive story.

For beauty, no description is needed, just a closeup, like this.

For fragrance, anybody who has used a topical arnica cream (to treat bruises and inflammation) might recognize the smell of arnica leaves.  This is especially true with Arnica mollis, which we usually call “fuzzy-leafed arnica.”  When you rub the leaves, a wonderful, savoury fragrance fills your nose.  As is often the case when trying to capture in words what something smells like, the best we can come up with is “indescribable,” but it makes Nadine very happy.

How we see the arnica: in the visible specturm

How an insect sees the arnica: in the ultraviolet spectrum

The interpretive story is linked to how the arnica attract pollinators.  The flower colour that we see is very different than the colour seen by insects.  As is the case with many members of the Aster family (dandelions, daisies, and fleabanes), the centre of an arnica gives off light in the ultraviolet spectrum.  The paired photos show how we see the flower, and how a bee sees the flower.  That bullseye means that arnica get visited by more than enough pollinators to successfully set seed.

Happy flower viewing, everyone!

The Sights and Sounds of Spring

When you live in Lake Louise, spring comes into existence slowly, almost painfully so.  A week ago we had a warm day, and there were flocks of swallows overhead.  Then it snowed and the swallows disappeared, not to return until today.

Prairie crocus.  Photo by Doug McKown

So, we thought, “if spring won't come to us, we'll go to spring,” and went looking for some early season hiking on the weekend.  We found it east of Canmore, on a sunny trail to Windy Point.  All the snow was gone, and the prairie crocuses were blooming everywhere.  We had great views of nearby snowy peaks, and enjoyed a welcome hit of sunshine.

But in the mountains, nothing says "spring" more than finding some animal out there in the mountains trying out its pickup line for the first time in almost a year.  It's the the wildlife equivalent of “hey, baby” at the bar on a Saturday night.  We found our pickup artist right near the top of the trail: a male dusky grouse, hidden just behind some brush, was puffing itself up and hooting out these amazing, low frequency notes.  It was positively symphonic.

My little camera recorded a pretty good video of the booming grouse, but the microphone couldn't pick up the sound, so I've attached a sound file of the dusky grouse's coastal cousin, the sooty grouse, so you can enjoy not just the sights, but also the sounds.. of spring!