journey east: day 9

I don't have a journal entry for June 10, 2006. I did stuff though, so the following is the best I can recollect from that day.

It was a beautiful morning. Lurking above us to the north, Mount Field glowed warmly in the morning sun. There was little in the way of cloud in the sky, and I was itching to pack up the site and hit the road. Neither myself nor Greg and Derek, who were driving to Greg's cottage near Vernon, had a long day of travelling ahead of us, so we opted to go for one last hike in the morning.

After cramming all our gear in our vehicles - Derek's jeep oozed camping stuff from every available crevice - we drove wast to the park boundary and the trail head for Wapta Falls. This would be the least intensive hike of any of the trails we had been on in our three years of camping. A couple of kilometres of graded trail that looked suspiciously like an old road, followed by a short walk in the woods, and Greg and I - Derek remained with the gear oozing jeep - found ourselves at Wapta Falls. We could hear the falls long before we saw them, and when we saw them finally it was an impressive sight.


Wapta Falls.

In the past I've mostly spent time in the mountains in the latter part of the summer, usually August and September. Here I was though and spring wasn't even officially over for another two weeks. All the flowing water was flowing harder, faster, whiter and louder than I had experienced before. It was grand.

At Wapta Falls there is a berm of debris or stone at the base of the falls. Footpaths wind around its base and criss-cross their way to a slightly flattened patch at the very top of it. Later in the season, when most of the snow has melted and the Kicking Horse River is running a little slower and not so high, visitors to the falls will be able to walk right out to the berm. Looking down on this wedge of stone set in the pounding mists of the falls I wanted to stand at the apex of the trail and feel the wet wind pass me. Another reason to return.

A short while later we were back at the parking lot. Our departure was devoid of maudlin moments. We agreed the past three years of hiking had been fabulous and pledged to do more, vowing to meet the following summer in Newfoundland - which is just a couple of months away. Turning out of the parking lot was odd. Derek and Greg turned west and I watched them disappear down the highway before I turned east. I was headed back toward Field, but didn't get far before pulling the car onto the shoulder of the highway.


You go west, I'll go east. See you in a year.

A couple years ago Parks Canada did a controlled burn in the Hoodoo Creek area of the park. The campground had been closed for a few seasons and the trees burned along the mountain side above it left a remarkable pattern. I think forest fires are one of the least understood natural events that occur in forests. They mark renewal. They also make for wonderful landscapes. Meaghan and I drove through Yellowstone National Park a decade after it was ravaged by a massive forest fire, and it was one of the most remarkable trips I have ever been on. It doesn't take long for life to fill the charred void left by flames. I wanted to hike the Hoodoo trail, but park staff said the area was still closed for the season. Sometimes I wish I was a bit more of a bad-ass.


Result of a controlled burn at Hoodoo Creek.

I was off again, heading toward Field, toward Alberta, toward the East Coast. I stopped one last time at the side of the road at Field. I didn't want to leave. My time in Yoho was a diversion from the reality I was on a one way trip away from Vancouver and everything I had know for the past 10 years. It hadn't been difficult leaving the city, but this was something else. I didn't want to leave the mountains. It broke my heart.

Soon enough I was passing a giant Alberta sized sign welcoming me to that province and a short time later I was in Banff. The town of Banff never really interested me. I'm not a big fan of hordes of tourists and even this early in the season it was chock-a-block full of people from away, albeit I was one of them, but I admit that begrudgingly. I wanted to visit the place where it all started. Cave and Basin National Historic Site is where the first national park was established in the country. Its genesis came from the discovery by a Canadian Pacific Railway construction worker of a cave and a hotspring in Banff. Two years later, in 1885, the area was officially designated a national park. Rocky Mountains Park later became Banff National Park.

The basin is a rather unremarkable stone depression at the base of a mountain. The stone is yellowish in colour and the surface of the water is covered in a bulbous layer of algea. It must have taken a truly entrepreneurial imagination to think it could be cleaned up enough to entice high paying tourists to take a dip in its scummy warm waters. Somehow they made it work.


The cave was quite remarkable. The room was lit by sun coming through a hole in the roof. It created one of those god-like shafts of light that are usually accompanied by a choir singing 'ahhh.'

The remarkable part of the site though is the cave. After paying my seven or nine dollar entry fee, which I never have a problem paying when it's a national park or some other not-for-profit venture, I stepped into a long shallow cave that led slightly upward. As with death, there was light at the end of the tunnel and it opened up into a larger space with a pool of water to one side and hole in the ceiling through which a shaft of sun poured. The sunbeam was focused on a man sitting on a wooden bench in one corner of the cave. I don't think I could have timed my trip better.

I hit the road again, with Lethbridge on my mind. A look at the map showed a seasonal road that ran north/south at the foot of the mountains. I turned off the Trans Canada and started to follow it. Have you ever had one of those nagging feelings that the sign you just passed, the one you glanced at but didn't really absorb, deserved to be absorbed? I had that feeling a few kilometres down the road, so I turned around to have a close look at the sign. Boy, that was a time saver. The sign said the highway was closed at the 56 kilometre mark. There was no through traffic.

Back on track I took a more direct and familiar route to Lethbridge. Along the way I stopped in at Fort MacLeod to pick up some post cards. Meaghan and I had been through this area the year before so things were feeling fairly familiar. It was getting late in the day though and not many places were open. I stopped in at a restaurant to take care of a ready to explode bladder and asked a local where I might find a store that sold touristy stuff. I was sent to the Greyhound Depot. Right. It was closed but gave me a great photo opportunity. I eventually found postcards and within 40 minutes I was knocking on Heather and Barry's door in Lethbridge. Yehaa.