From Waterton to Kananaskis Country
View from Bears Hump
©Bert Gildart: The trail from the visitor center in Waterton Lakes National Park was one of the steepest trails Janie and I have hiked in a long time. It was, however, short, and about an hour later the one-mile-long almost vertical-seeming trail reached its end at a rounded edifice known as the “Bear’s Hump.”
Other than just a great leg stretcher, we hiked the trail as we knew it would provide magnificent views, and we weren’t disappointed. From “the hump,” we could peer down the entire length of the Waterton Lake clear to Goat Haunt, which is in Glacier National Park. Together the two parks form a grand idea.
GRAND IDEA
The idea was conceived by the Rotary Clubs who believed the good will expressed by our two nations should be celebrated, and in 1932, the international acknowledgement of good will was made official when Canada and the United States created the Waterton/Glacier International Peace Park.
From the management point of view, the unification makes sense, as wildlife certainly doesn’t understand boundaries. For instance, biologists from the two countries can mange bears as part of an ecosystem, rather than saying: “Well, these are U.S. bears,” or “These are Canadian bears.”
HIGHEST MOUNTAIN
From Bear’s Hump, you are also reminded just how lofty the Canadian Rockies can be. As you look down this grand sweep the relief is great and from here Glacier’s highest mountain, Mount Cleveland juts up from the lake to reach the height of 10,466 feet.
Kananaskis Country
My one disappointment is that I never climbed the mountain during my 13 years of employment in Glacier and that I haven’t done it since. It’s not a difficult mountain to climb, essentially just a walk-up. And I still plan to climb it. As always, time is the problem-as Janie and I have been doing so many other exciting things.
CAMERAS SETTING OUR PACE
So far, if anything summarizes this trip it’s our slow progress, based on curiosity and on the pace set by our cameras. After leaving Waterton, we proceeded north toward Banff, but re-discovered along the way a beautiful segment of land known as the Kananaskis.
Dall sheep greeting us
I first drove the Kananaskis back in the 60s, when I first moved to the Northwest shortly after graduating from high school. At the time the road was all gravel and the country was extraordinarily wild. Now the road is paved and the provincial government has created from this 100-mile-long stretch of wilderness a number of provincial parks.
KANANASKIS COUNTRY
The parks help manage wildlife and shortly after we departed the little prairie town of Pincher Creek in Alberta, we encountered a band of sheep in the Don Getty Provincial Parks. At that point we had entered Kananaskis Country.
What an incredible time to drive this two-lane winding road. In fact, the country was so spectacular that when we were mid way along the drive, we began looking for campgrounds and discovered one of the most beautiful in yet another provincial park known as the Peter Lougheed.
This park contains mountains typified by some of the most profound folding and faulting I’ve ever seen. They’re all snow capped now from storm of just the previous night. And now we’re learning that some of this park contains some of Alberta’s best mountain biking and that the lakes offer spectacular kayaking.
If the weather were to hold-and if we didn’t have assignments in Banff and Jasper, we could spend a month. Now, we’ll just have to see how much time we can squeeze out from the Lower Lake campground in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. Last night it again snowed, but now the clouds are rising and the mist on the lakes is framing some of the grand peaks on Mount Indefatigable that rise above Kananaskis Lake.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” Janie keeps saying, “to stay here for a day or so, build a fire and watch the weather patterns sweep through this country that remains ever so wild?”
Well, we’ll see; we’ll see.
