The September 6, 2018

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Thursday Sep 6

We consider ourselves quite lucky because we had another beautiful day. Temperatures reached 24C again and the smoke is almost gone. It was a bit chilly in the morning, but definitely time for short sleeves in the afternoon.

The plan for today was to explore Yoho National Park, and we did. We first drove to Takakkaw Falls at the end of Yoho Valley Road, a very high waterfall that is 380 meters from its base, fed by glaciers and Icefields above. It’s possible to hike the spectacular 20 km Iceline Trail from here, something Ferdy did when still with Parks Canada, but this one is for really fit people and not to anyone’s liking today!

The Natural Bridge is no longer traversable on foot, like it was years ago when Ferdy was first there. Now you can walk across the Kicking Horse River on a solid concrete bridge over what once was a waterfall, then became a crevasse after millennia of erosion and will be a canyon many years into the future. Rushing water like this is something most people can watch for hours. But we had a job to do here, on to Emerald Lake. This jewel in the Rockies with views of the emerald-coloured lake against the Rockies backdrop is to die for.

We checked in to the Field Visitor Centre and its great model of the Spiral Tunnel, then headed west to Golden and south again to Radium Hot Springs. Following the Columbia River, we tried to find a place to explore the Columbia Wetlands Area but were not able to find it.

Back in town we again saw many bighorn sheep, all rams, who apparently stay around the area year-round. The ewes and young stay mostly higher up the mountain until mating season in the Fall. We saw the latter a couple of days ago, as many as 20 of them, so they’ll be meeting up soon with all these big horny rams.

We had very good schnitzels at the Old Salzburg Restaurant.

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Comments

[toni]

What a beautifull place Emerald Lake is, breathtaking....