Highway #3 curls around Crowsnest Ridge and descends into a valley of lakes. The valley thus suddenly revealed, the elevation and the way it opens out before the observer, makes for a fittingly dramatic entrance to Alberta. I pedalled down through the series of little towns that together make up the municipality of Crowsnest pass: Coleman, Blairmore, Frank and Bellevue. The Frank slide is the matching bookend to the Hope slide on the Crowsnest route through the Rockies. I looked out on that somber place, boulders the size of houses piled up in a huge area, a graveyard now because most of the bodies of those killed there were never recovered. In the early morning of April 29, 1903, half of Turtle mountain fell away, buring the eastern part of Frank and killing as many as
... read more