Chasing Ice - Our Favourite Documentary this Season

Every year on the trail, we discover as much from our guests as they do from us, especially about goings-on in the wider world.  Often, there’s a book or a documentary that everyone is talking about, and in 2013 it was “Chasing Ice,” a terrific movie about shrinking glaciers.  Since all the critics have just released their "best movies" lists, here's our choice for the last year.

Crowfoot Glacier, Banff National Park, 1920s

Crowfoot Glacier, 2004

We’ve watched the decline of ice here in the Rockies for over twenty years, and the archival record for Banff and Yoho shows really dramatic changes.  But in “Chasing Ice,” celebrated photographer James Balog and his crew set up time lapse cameras in Alaska, Greenland and Iceland, and you can watch with your own eyes as ice vanishes in the space of months and years.

The movie swings between pure adventure -- setting up cameras in polar and alpine areas takes great courage and chutzpah -- and visual proof of our changing climate.  It is impossible to see this film without being strongly and viscerally affected by its message, especially as it builds to its rivetting visual climax, the largest calving event ever filmed, at the Ilulissat Glacier in Greenland. Spoiler alert: this sequence is the most dramatic moment in the film, and the bigger the screen you can find to watch it on, the better.

Grizzly Bears and the Wonders of GPS, Take 2!

In March, we wrote about grizzly bears being fitted with GPS collars during the summer of 2012.  Since then, the 2013 season for bears has fully played out: they woke up, roamed around for a summer and, with a couple of exceptions, they've now all gone back to bed.  Surprise, surprise, there were at least two bears still active in the park on the weekend, even though it was -38 Celsius in Lake Louise!

Here's the four coolest things that the GPS collars revealed this year:

1. EARLIEST WAKE UP: Bear #122 woke up on March 24.  This adult male is one of Banff's biggest bears (about 700 lbs), and he always wakes up early. Unfortunately, his collar is no longer working, but we know that as recently as three weeks ago, he hauled a drowned elk out of the frozen Bow River, dragged it to shore, and was having a late-season meal.



2. SHORTEST SUMMER SEASON: Bear #72, a female who has lived in the greater Lake Louise area for over a dozen years, was active for less than five months this year!  She came out of hibernation on May 4 and denned up on October 1.  Her big news: she was seen mating in June and may have new cubs next spring.

Bear #72 in Upper Consolation Valley

3. LONGEST HIBERNATION: Bear #64, a famous female who lives near Banff, denned from October 12, last fall until to May 3, 2013.  That's six months and 21 days!  During that whole time, she didn't eat or drink anything.  Great weight-loss strategy!

4. BEST USE OF THE GPS TECHNOLOGY: When Bear #138, a young female, went to into her den on November 1, she chose to snooze in Pipestone Bowl, which is adjacent to the Lake Louise ski area.  Since it is popular with out-of-bounds skiers, Parks Canada decided to close the bowl for the winter, so she can sleep in peace.  Without the GPS signal, they wouldn't have known she had denned up there.

We'll keep you posted on the comings and goings of Banff's bear's next year.

Skating on Bow Lake

 “Bow Lake is in, and it's like a mirror!”

Those words may not make your heart beat faster, but if you like to skate, this is exciting news indeed.  Bow Lake, along the Icefields Parkway, is one of the park's most accessible and photogenic bodies of water.  Last week, after the first of our winter's cold snaps, it froze clean with no snow.  Lake ice never stays flawless for long, so we put in several days of skating while the opportunity held.

The ice was smooth and thick, reflecting both us and the mountains.  It was also so transparent that it gave us the willies when we skated into the shallower sections of the lake.  We could see right to the bottom, and the fish shot off in front of us as we passed.

Because of the cold and the humidity, small impurities on the lake's surface had given rise to “ice flowers”, delicate and exquisite blossoms of frost.  We ended up splayed out on the ice, like kids, to take in the small scale beauty.

An "ice flower"

Taking in the beauty, up close

New snow fell on the weekend, and now we wait for the next lake to freeze....

Fighting Fire with Fire in Kootenay National Park

November seems a funny time to talk about fire, but Kootenay National Park recently released an amazing time lapse video of the Numa Creek forest fire. This fire, located about 30 km from Lake Louise, was started on July 25 by lightning.

Numa Creek Fire, photo by Pam Doyle, for the Calgary Herald

Under certain conditions, Parks Canada has the option of letting fires burn, but they decided to fight this blaze.  It threatened park facilities and the Kootenay Parkway, and maybe memories of the big 2003 Kootenay fires were still fresh in everybody's minds.  The fire, however, was in a difficult to access area with steep slopes, and firefighting was difficult, so when the flames picked up after a few days, the park's firefighters tried a different tack: fighting fire with fire.

This might sound counter-intuitive, but if you ignite unburned areas near the main fire, you can use prevailing winds, and even the convective currents generated by the flames themselves, to steer the fire in the direction you want.

Watch on Youtube to see how it all played out!

White-Tailed Ptarmigans Showcase the Changing Seasons

The resident camouflage experts here in the park are hardy grouse-like birds called white-tailed ptarmigans.  They are amongst our toughest critters, as year round, they live at high elevations, usually above tree-line.  In summer, they sport mottled feathers, and blend in with the rocks and lichens of the alpine tundra.  In winter, they are as white as snow, right down to feathers growing out of their feet!

Feathered feet of a ptarmigan in winter plumage.

We've been keeping an eye open for ptarmigan all summer – with no luck – but in the last two weeks, we've seen three large families.  They are a magical sight, as they are in “transformation” mode: new white feathers are coming in, and the darker feathers are moulting out.

September 19: winter and summer plumage in one package.

Their timing is perfect, as the first snows have been falling in the high country, and the landscape is now a cross between rocky and white, just like the birds.



Speaking of timing, our summer hiking season ended  a couple of days ago, and by the photo below, you can see that there wasn't much “summer” left here in the Lake Louise area.  At Consolation Lake on September 30, seven guests earned their ptarmigan merit badges that day – even without the camouflage – for toughing out fresh snow, strong winds, and a 0º Celsius high!

September 30: Ptarmigan merit badge recipients at Consolation Lake.

Cone Crop of the Century

If you've been hiking in the Rockies this summer, you've probably noticed something: the evergreens are loaded with cones.  The subalpine fir and the Engelmann spruce in the higher parts of Banff and Yoho parks are covered with cones, and in our twenty plus years here, this is only the second time we've seen this.

Bumper crop of subalpine fir cones ripening in mid-August

It's called “masting”, and has been observed in other tree species around the world. Biologists think that when big mast years, like this one, are paired up against years of almost no cone production, then predators of cones – like squirrels – can never reach a consistent population level where they can eat all the seeds in all the cones.

It's the trees' defence system: starve the squirrels one year, and overwhelm them with food the next.  It guarantees that some of the seeds in the cones will get to the ground to germinate, which is what the trees want.

Fir cones shedding their seeds last week.

The big question is, “how do the trees do it?”  How do they synchronize, between individuals and across species, the big mast years and the years of low cone production?  We haven't been able to find the answer, but if anybody out there knows, we'd love to hear about it.

In the meantime, you can enjoy the crop through photography, and you can watch the red squirrels in their collecting frenzy.  In the last couple of weeks, we've been beaned in the head by cones that the squirrels are throwing down to the ground to collect for winter.

Cones clipped by squirrels for winter storage.

The Summer of Fire, Ten Years After

Now that summer is on the wane, and the Numa Fire burning in Kootenay National Park is settling down, we can turn our attention to the summer of 2003, ten years ago, when it felt like much of western Canada was ablaze.

On July 31 that year, a large lightning storm in Kootenay (just south of Lake Louise) started several fires.  Two of them eventually grew into one enormous fire which burned over 17,000 hectares of the park.  It didn't rain for 42 straight days, so every morning we'd wake up to blue skies, but not to the south: behind Mount Temple, the signature peak in the village of Lake Louise, it would look like a nuclear bomb was going off, as smoke from the fires rose to 20,000 feet.

By mid-September, rains and some bold back-burning finally put out the blaze, but since then, life has returned.  We've been watching and photographing the changes in Kootenay, so here's a ten year anniversary montage in images...

August, 2003.  At the height of the 2003 Kootenay wildfires, firefighters take a break after working to save historic Kootenay Park Lodge from the flames.  Photo by park warden John Niddrie.

July 2005. Two years after the fire, the forest floor near Stanley Glacier is covered in arnica flowers.

August, 2007.  Four years after the fire, the Stanley Glacier trail erupts in fireweed.

August, 2013.  Ten years after the fire, young lodgepole pine are now taller than a person near Marble Canyon.

August, 2013.  Burnt trees and pink wildflowers stand in beautiful contrast on the trail through Prospector's Valley.