The Italian Job – Lake O'Hara Style

I was up hiking at Lake O'Hara yesterday, for the first time this season, and it brought me back to a very interesting pilgrimage we undertook in Italy this spring.
 
We visited Falmenta, the ancestral home of Lawrence Grassi, perhaps Lake O'Hara's most famous trail builder.  If you are a Lake O'Hara fan, you've probably admired his trails.  His handiwork is the original “Italian Job,” long before Michael Caine and the boys pulled off their movie heist.

Lawrence Grassi climbing on Castle Mountain

Lawrence came to Canada in 1912 as a young man, and quietly climbed his way into our Rocky Mountain history books in the 20s, 30s and 40s.  He was a skilled mountaineer and guide, but in his spare time he built trails, including good chunks of O'Hara's trail system in the late 1950s.  His stone staircases and stepping stones are still in good shape, 60 years later, and our trip to Falmenta slowly revealed why.

Lawrence working on the trails of Lake O'Hara in the 50s.

Amanda, Lawrence's great niece, with a
photo of her grandmother, Lawrence's sister

Falmenta is perched on a steep hillside about an hour's drive from Lake Maggiore, and when we arrived unannounced, we really didn't have much of a plan.  In the town's small piazza, we asked around a bit, and were soon introduced to Amanda Grassi, Lawrence's great niece!  She took us on a tour to see the house that Lawrence grew up in, and pretty soon we picked up a small entourage of locals.  In the local cafe, we learned more about the town, and about their lives, and once we said our goodbyes, we headed into the hills to see what we could see.

Nadine, Amanda and Emilio, in front of Lawrence's home

One of thousands of stone walls around Falmenta

It wasn't long before we started to understand where Lawrence got his inspiration.  The hillsides around Falmenta are all terraced with dry stone walls, and the old and abandoned farmhouses are dry stone as well.  The forest is reclaiming what were once terraced farm plots and pastures, but the ghosts of a centuries-old stoneworking culture is everywhere on display.  Lawrence must have been steeped in this tradition from the cradle, and we're lucky he wanted to showcase his heritage in the Rockies.

An abandoned two story house, made with
 dry stone construction

And we'll be the benefactors again next summer.  There will be a new generation of stone-building here, when Amanda's brother-in-law Emilio (married to Lawrence's other great niece) comes out to Canmore in June, 2017. He plans to teach locals dry stone techniques, and together they will restore the trail to Grassi Lakes.

It will be “The Italian Job,” take two.

Byron Harmon, Photographer Extraordinaire, and the Mystery of Mount Habel

A few years ago, one of our fellow guides, Jeff Douglas, was featured on a Canadian stamp. He was perched atop Mount Victoria at sunrise, looking down towards Lake Louise.  Now we know that writing letters is a totally passe activity these days, but it's still cool to see a postage stamp that features someone you know, right in your own backyard.

In a couple of weeks, as part of their ongoing series on Canadian Photography, Canada Post is issuing another stamp that features a peak in our (slightly bigger) backyard.  The photo on the stamp is called “Climbing Mount Habel,” and is by one of our favourite Rocky Mountain photographers, Byron Harmon.

Harmon showed up in Banff  in 1903, and over the next 40 years, he practically invented the way this park is portrayed.  His photos are iconic, and we feature him in one of our shows – Rocky Mountain Madness – as a worthy inspiration for any photographer trying to capture what makes this place special.

Anyway, we wanted to remind ourselves of where Mount Habel was, and found it just north of us, near the Wapta Icefield.

But that's not the mountain on the stamp.

The mountain on the stamp is called Mount des Poilus, and it's located in the Yoho Valley, not far from the famous Iceline hiking trail.  So what's going on?  Well, Mount des Poilus was originally named for German mountaineer Jean Habel, who first explored the Yoho Valley in 1897.

We've long admired Mount des Poilus, and took this photo
while backpacking in the Yoho Valley a couple of years ago.

It was renamed in a fit of patriotic re-naming after the end of World War I.  Here's the rest of the story, from peakfinder.com:

“One week following the armistice which ended the First World War, eleven peaks in the Kananaskis Area were named after prominent French military leaders who had served during the confict. "Les Annales," a French publication, had suggested that one mountain be named, "for the great hero of the age, the humble and fascinating poilu (the lowest ranking soldiers of the French Army) who had battled the invading Germans."

Arthur O. Wheeler was asked to recommend a peak and the fact that he chose Mount Habel to become Mount des Poilus may have had something to do with the fact that Jean Habel was a German citizen. However almost seventy years later Jean Habel’s name was again placed on a mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Author Graeme Pole’s suggestion that a peak on the Continental Divide just north of Yoho National Park be named Mount Habel was accepted by the authorities in 1987.”

Sign of the Bat

We moved to Lake Louise in 1992, which means we are about to embark on our 25th year of calling Banff National Park home.  We've lived through a quarter century of nature revelations, including the discovery of: a golden eagle flyway over the park; a grove of 1,000 year old whitebark pines; and the South American migration destination of the park's elusive black swifts.

At the latest meeting of the local naturalist's club, Parks Canada revealed Banff's most recent nature discovery: the first bat hibernaculum in the park!  A hibernaculum is a nifty scrabble word for a den, cave, or any other hibernation location.  Since bats are voracious bug eaters, come winter, they either have to fly far enough south to find flying insects, or find a cave to hole up in.

Bat (probably a little brown bat) hibernating in a cave in Banff
National Park.  Photo by Tim McAllister, Parks Canada

Last fall, the park started doing some cave surveys along the highway from Lake Louise to Jasper – the Icefields Parkway. In December, they stopped into a cave to replace the batteries on some of their monitoring equipment, and there, hanging on the wall, was a bat.

The identity of the bat is not known for certain, but the size suggests it is a little brown bat, one of seven species found in the park.  Bats are not everyone's cup of tea, but we thought this little guy or gal was pretty cute.  If you're bat-phobic, and we can't change your mind with a picture, it's worth remembering that bats eat their own body weight in insects each night, and that includes mosquitoes!  So here's a toast to both Banff's bats and the joy of discovery.  Who knows what nature will reveal next?

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!