Where the Wild Things Sleep – Grizzly Bear Den Sites Revealed Thanks to GPS Technology

Banff's first grizzly bear was spotted last week, by hidden camera.  Bear #122, a large male that has made his home in the Bow Valley for the last few years, was captured by one of the park's automated cameras at a research site near Castle Junction on March 19.  Adult male bears are often active by March. The rest of the gang (subadults, lone females, moms with cubs) will come out of hibernation over the next six or eight weeks.

Out of sight usually means out of mind, but we often wonder where bears are spending the winter.  We don't know where they are, but we have a friend who does.  Brian Spreadbury works for Parks Canada in their Resource Conservation department, and specializes in wildlife work.  He can use GPS data to find bear den sites.  Since 2012, a handful of Banff's grizzly bears have been fitted with GPS collars, allowing researchers to track their movement.  Every fall, when the GPS signal suddenly disappears, you know that a bear has gone into its den.

Using the last transmission point as a guide, Brian has discovered several dens.  If you're wondering, he waits until the summer or early fall, long after the bear in question has emerged, so he doesn't disturb them.  Last fall, Brian sent us a photo of the den used by grizzly bear #72, a local female, in the winter of 2103 – 2014.  The park likes to keep the exact location of dens a secret, but Brian recorded all the other info about the den.  Take a look, and imagine yourself spending six months snoozing in this particular spot...

Gung Hey Fat Choy: the Year of the... Ptarmigan?

Today is the official start of the Chinese lunar new year, and depending on who you talk to, it is either the year of the sheep, the goat, or the ram.

On today's snowshoeing trip, we didn't see any hoofed mammals, but we did see a most extraordinary bird, and it is a worthy Rocky Mountain substitute for this year's "official" animal.

It was a white-tailed ptarmigan, and it can boast many of the same features that the Chinese attribute to the goat / sheep / ram:

• Sheep are "gentle": ptarmigans stay alive by munching on willow buds.  How gentle is that?

• Sheep are "mild-mannered": when was the last time you heard about a ptarmigan going postal?

• Sheep are "shy": ptarmigans epitomize shy.  It's their life goal.  With their cryptic feathers, they blend right into the background.  In the winter, they are completely white except for the black eyes and beak.  In the summer, they sport feathers that look like rocks and lichens.

White-tailed ptarmigan in fall, moulting from its summer plumage

• Sheep are "stable": check!  By growing extra feathers on their feet, ptarmigans have stable snowshoes to keep them upright and supported while they walk around in the wintry landscape

Feathered feet on a ptarmigan that's being banded for a research project.  Photo courtesy of Kathy Martin 

• Sheep are "brimming with a strong sense of kindheartedness and justice": okay, four out of five ain't bad!

Gung Hey Fat Choy, everyone, and enjoy whatever wildlife you get to see here in the park!

Ice Magic, Beyond the Sculptures...

We were up at Lake Louise to see the ice sculptures this evening, a day after the carvers put the finishing touches on their creations at the annual “Ice Magic” festival. Ten teams were given a dozen 300-lb blocks of ice each, and it is truly astounding to see the results of their efforts.  Our favourite was the "Wonder of the World by Faberge," with a giant hand holding a giant egg, which in turn contained the Taj Mahal.

Seeing these sculptures reminded us of how beautiful ice can be, and how there are frozen works of art everywhere in this park.  For instance, we'd been down to the end of the lake a few days ago, and seen some of nature's Ice Magic at “Louise Falls.” These falls form every winter, as there is a permanent spring at the top of one of the lakeside cliffs.  Even with a flow rate of only a few litres per minute, by mid-winter, the water dribbling out freezes into an impressive 100 metre tall ice column.

Louise Falls

Earlier this month, at Lake Minnewanka, near Banff, the lake ice was frozen thick enough for skating, and the trapped air bubbles in the ice again made for exquisite and impressive art.

Air bubbles at Lake Minnewanka

Tonight, we've gone through our photo album, and pulled out a few of our favourite “frozen fotos.”  We hope you enjoy the Ice Magic!

ps: the ice sculptures at Lake Louise usually stay in really good shape until early February, if you want to come to see them.

Skating at Lake Louise in November

Frost flowers and frost heaves at Vermilion Lake, near Banff in November

Frost on water birch leaves in September

The Upper Victoria Glacier at sunrise in July

Early ice in October in one of the side channels of Paradise Creek

Surface hoar frost on the snow near Lake Louise

What's with all the Frost Flowers?

One week ago, after a long spell of milder than average weather, it suddenly got cold and clear. Winter had arrived all at once.  For six nights in a row, until last night, we hit -24 degrees C here in Lake Louise.  As expected, our lakes began to freeze, but instead of nice clean ice, which we love for skating, every lake was soon covered in "frost flowers."  They're beautiful, but last winter we managed to skate on lakes that were mostly free of these frost flowers, and we wondered, "why the difference?"

Frost flowers at Vermilion Lake

Well, it turns out that researchers Robert W. Style and Grae Worster have answered that question.  In 2009, they published "Frost flower formation on sea ice and lake ice" in a journal called "Geophysical Research Letters."  Their article showed that the flowers do not form like conventional frost, in which water vapour in the atmosphere condenses and freezes on a cold surface. (This is the normal way you end up with frost on your car windshield.)

Instead, when there is a strong temperature differential between the newly formed ice and the air temperature, moisture sublimates right out of the ice and freezes into frost crystals.  Once the flowers are in place, even if the air itself is very dry, they continue to grow as long as the air temperature remains below about -15 degrees C.

Smooth ice at one of the ponds near Field, B.C.

So the mystery is solved.... or is it?  Today, we went to Yoho Park, west of Lake Louise, and skated on the ponds near Field.  They were clear and smooth.  Where were the frost flowers?

The answer is that it needs to be calm for them to form.  Most places here in the Rockies were dead calm this week, but not Field.  It sits below Kicking Horse Pass, where the cold, high pressure air squeezed through to create a strong local wind. Wind is the enemy of frost flowers. According to the researchers, "frost flowers are typically only seen at wind speeds below about 5 metres per second: at higher wind speeds, turbulence mixes the region of local supersaturation with the drier air above."

If you like lots of math, here's the full story, but frost flowers or not, being outside on our frozen lakes has been great fun.

A Fireweed Summer and a Fireweed Fall

This year we had perfect conditions for fireweed, one of the showiest wildflowers in the Rockies.  If you visited in August, you couldn't help but notice their hot pink blossoms, especially in areas where fires burned in 2003.

Now that it's September, the fields of fireweed are the gift that keeps on giving.  In the first two weeks of the month, the leaves turned a beautiful burgundy, and now, in the past week, the seed pods have been splitting open, releasing what might be the lightest and most abundant seed in the Rockies.

Fireweed leaves turning burgundy, with some harebells in the mix.

I did an experiment last week, opening up a seed pod and doing a seed count.  I ended up with 581 seeds, and given that a portion of the seeds blew away in a gust of wind (before I moved the experiment inside), my guess is that there may have been 750 or 800 seeds in the pod.  Each fireweed plant can have several dozen seed pods, and if you start doing the math, that means billions or trillions of seeds produced in the park this summer.

There were 581 seeds in this one fireweed seed pod (plus the ones that blew away).

A field of fireweed going to seed yesterday on the Highline trail near the Plain of Six Glaciers.

North of Lake Louise, there was a fire in early July along the Icefields Parkway, the road to Jasper.  By next summer, the seeds from this year's bumper crop of fireweed will germinate, and in a few years, there will be fabulous roadside viewing.

Happy first day of autumn everyone!

Top Secret Burgess Shale Fossil Site

This week has been full of exciting events.  On one of our hikes, we saw a grizzly bear (at a safe distance).  It was a highlight moment for everyone.

The bear was a little too far away for a photo, but a couple of days later, at our lunch stop on the Plain of Six Glaciers Trail, we saw a tremendous icefall off the Upper Victoria Glacier. This time, we all managed to get good photographs.

The biggest highlight of the week, however, was a field trip with some of our Parks Canada colleagues to a newly discovered outcrop of the Burgess Shale fossils in Kootenay National Park.  We're not allowed to divulge its location -- all we can say is that it was a real slog to get there -- but it was a real treat to be in a location where fossils of creatures that have not seen the light of day in over 500 million years are being exposed through careful quarrying.

Sydneyia inexpectans, exposed to sunlight for the first time in over 500 million years

We were shown the day's findings, which included a perfectly preserved Sidneyia inexpectans.  I got to hold it in my hand, and I was blown away by the idea that until that morning, it had been hidden in stone for half a billion years!

Jean Bernard Caron (top right) examining a freshly split open piece of shale

We also got a great site tour by Jean Bernard Caron, Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.  He went back and forth between answering our questions, and examining freshly split open layers of shale.  If you are a fossil fan, the ROM's web page is full of great photos of fossils from the Burgess Shale, and animations of the creatures, including my new pal Sydneyia.

Definitely a highlight of my summer.  How many times can you say "that rocks!" and really mean it? 

"Clive" – The Salt Loving Marmot

Two weeks ago, we were up at Helen Lake, and after settling in for lunch, a very bold marmot approached our group.  We figured it had been fed by other hikers, but it showed no interest in our food.  Instead, it marched over to one of our backpacks and started licking the straps.

We were all pretty surprised, and stayed still to watch. In very short order, it became clear that the marmot had a major salt addiction.  It visited each of our packs in turn, and then decided to try other options, eventually licking one bare arm and one pant leg.  It was fascinating to watch, because we rarely get close to marmots.  Everyone was so enthralled that we decided to give the marmot a name, just for the day.  One of the guests settled on 'Clive'.

Clive discovers the motherlode of salt  –  hiking pole handles

We figured it was a one time craving, like when you've just gotta have potato chips.

But we were back at Helen Lake yesterday, and so was Clive.  His (or her  – it's hard to tell) addiction had not abated, but this time Clive discovered something even better than packs – hiking pole handles.

We have another trip running to Helen Lake this Friday, on July 25, and we will be on the lookout to see if Clive is still there for another rare close-up encounter.

Clive entertaining our gang of hikers on yesterday's hike

Clive the marmot checks out his namesake backpack