Blogs from Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, North America - page 13

Woke up to sun and it still a bit brisk, with gloves on to make the coffee this morning! Tent down, car packed, dog walked...off for another journey...drove to Mouraine Lake this morning, and once again, cars, cars, cars, campers, campers, campers and no place to park, drove around once, and drove right back out! WOW! Tourist everywhere from so many different places, all taking in the beauty of the Rockies and Banff. Back out on the trail and trough the pass and down to Golden, BC to have a night with my dear friends Bill and Maggie! Bill cooked up salmon, and all root veggies and salad from his garden. A chance to catch up and find out where and what we have been doing. Maggie's brother is living in the addition and he came ... read more

Up early and on the road just after 10 am. Drove to Medicine Hat and found a great cafe to get on the internet and put up several more blogs and send out a few emails. Started back on the road around 2 pm, after Otis having a bit of a stretch. Drove through the most spectular weather, you could see it coming (or I guess I was driving into the storm), which lasted about 4 minutes! Literally drove through Calgary and into Banff National Park. The temperature dropped again to 9 - 12 C, depending on where you are. Decided to camp at Lake Louise for the next 3 nights. The campsite has a bear fence (electric) around the campgrounds to keep the bears out. Got the tent set up and us fed by 9 ... read more

Pour notre ultime trek dans les rocheusescanadiennes, nous sommes partis a pied de Lake Louise Village avec un temps plutot clement. La rando consistait a passer 4 nuits en montagne du cote Nord-Ouest de la vallee de la Bow. Nous avons donc pris nos provisions : des pates, du riz, des pates, du riz et du ketchup (sans oublier le sel et le poivre, et quelaues barres de cereales). Voici donc le recit de ces derniers jours... Day 1 Quand nous entrons dans la Bouldor Pass, les discussions de geographe reprennent de plus belle. Sur ce trajet de 18km, les discours de politiques et les opinions sur le sujet fusent mais sont vite stoppes par des reliefs geomorphologiques remarquables. Chacun y va de son “synclinal/anticlinal”, de son “erosion differentielle” ou de son “pendage fort”, sans parler ... read more

NB : Avant toute chose, nous voudrions signaler que ce paragraphe est potentiellement susceptible de choquer les esprits peu enclins aux baragouinages pseudo-scientifiques. Evitez de lire les lignes ci-dessous si l'article sur Calgary vous a deja prealablement traumatise. Promis, nous allons tenter de faire court. Comment se sont forme les rocheuses canadiennes ? Revenons tout d'abord aux origines, avant que le cycle orogenique alpin de la formation des rocheuses ne se declenche. Vieux de plus d'1,5 milliard d'annee, le bouclier canadien temoin de l'epoque precambrienne constitue alors une morne peneplaine decimee par l'erosion. Des lors, la mer va peu a peu recouvrir la partie occidentale du continent pour apporter son lot de sediments. C'est pourquoi l'on retrouve des roches de substance calcaire liee a la fossilisation de corps marins dans les differentes strates formes au fil ... read more

Day 33. Friday. Another fabulous day of riding. There are'nt a lot of options when it comes to roads in this area so I retraced my path to Golden, BC but this time I stayed on highway 1 and went to Glacier National Park. I stopped at several road side attractions that I skipped yesterday. There is a spot called the Spiral Tunnels where in the 1920's they dug and blasted two spiral tunnels in the mountains for the railroad because it was too steep for the trains to climb out of the valley. Pretty ingenious. The road to Golden is a nice one. Several kilometers of it are literally cut into the rock and there are huge screens draped over the rock surface to catch any falling debris. There are also several avalanche areas where ... read more