Mount Stephen Fossil Site

November 1, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

After a quick trip through Kootenay National Park, our Rocky Mountain road trip continued into Banff and Yoho National Parks. I’ve been to Banff a few times since the pandemic, so Banff was really more of a stopover on the way to Yoho, which was the highlight for the second half of our trip. Unfortunately, there aren’t as many frontcountry camping options in Yoho, and given that it was the long weekend, the only campsite we could get was in Lake Louise.

It was still cool though because the last time I camped in Banff, I stayed at the Tunnel Mountain campground, so at least I got to try something new! Camping in Banff is really unlike anywhere else I’ve ever camped. It’s so incredibly popular, not just in Canada, but all over the world, so it has some really unique campsites. I can’t think of anywhere else except the National Parks in the Rocky Mountains where there are multiple campgrounds boasting hundreds of car-camping sites. So we were able to get a site for 2 nights with minimal advance planning, which was good because even with almost 400 sites in this campground alone, it was sold out by the time the long weekend actually arrived!

The other wild thing about the campground is that it’s surrounded by an electric fence to make it completely bearproof! Even so, they still occasionally wander in, so you still have to be bear safe, but it’s a cool idea. We arrived in the late afternoon and took it easy for a few hours. Our friend, Jason, from the Rockwall Trail had finished his thru hike on his section of the GDT, so he met up with us to celebrate! We opted to check out the Station Restaurant, which is a restaurant that’s been set up in the old school Railway Station. It even has some tables in an old railway car! The food was delicious and we chowed down on our second elk burger of the trip before heading back for an early night.

We had to go to bed early because we had an early rise for our guided hike to Mount Stephen. Since I started dating Seth 12 years ago, I learned that there is an incredibly important fossil site in Yoho National Park called the Burgess Shale. Seth’s been dying to visit it for years, so when we planned a trip to Yoho, I couldn’t help but check out the guided hikes. There was still some availability, so I booked a visit, even though I had a lot of guilt over going without Seth. Bbut it was honestly so much fun, I’d be more than happy to go again with him in the future!

The Burgess Shale is a UNESCO world heritage site that is recognized around the world as one of the most well preserved, and oldest, examples of soft-bodied marine animals, dating back 508 million years to the middle Cambrian era. The entire site is protected, so the only way you can visit it is on a guided hike with either Parks Canada or the Geoscience Foundation. There’s two locations to choose from, either Walcott Quarry or Mount Stephen. Walcott Quarry is 22km round trip, while Mount Stephen is 8km. The catch is that both have over 800m of elevation, which makes Mount Stephen an incredibly steep and taxing hike, with a grade of ~20% for the majority of the hike.

I originally picked Mount Stephen because I thought Walcott Quarry was the more famous of the two sites, so I figured I’d save that one to do with Seth. Now that I have visited, I don’t think one is more famous than the other, but I think I made the right choice because I went with two other hikers, so we enjoyed the challenge of Mount Stephen.

Our tour was with Parks Canada. There was 10 people on the tour and we left from the visitor center in Field at 7am (hence the early wake-up call). Our guide seemed delighted with our group because everyone was pretty fit, so we made a really good pace on the hike. It’s honestly a top-notch tour and we learned so much historical and scientific information on the tour. The Mount Stephen site was discovered first and is credited to Charles Walcott in the early 1900’s, but we learned that Walcott is really the one who made the site famous, but didn’t really discover it.

It was likely first discovered by the local first nations groups, and then later by a surveyor for the railroad. It was just Walcott that really understood what he was looking at and drew attention to the site. Walcott collected over 65,000 fossils between the two sites and for many years, anyone could hike up to the site and take a fossil. That’s not the case now. You must be accompanied with a registered guide and if you try to sneak in otherwise, there’s several cameras that text your photo directly to the park warden, who will then come and escort you down with an automatic appearance in court. But with a guide you can enjoy the experience in peace!

It’s definitely a steep hike. It’s a slog the entire way up. You break out of the trees about 75% through the hike and we had a nice break along the ridge before continuing up another steep climb to the quarry. The quarry is a shale rock site literally located right on the side of the mountain. It has incredible views of Field and the surrounding mountains and I would have been willing to do the tour just for the views! But the fossils are really unreal. Like I said, they’re 508 million years old and incredibly well preserved. The most recognizable are the trilobites, but our group was more enamoured by the anomolocaris (replica pictured above on the left).

We had an hour to eat our lunch and freely explore in the quarry. Hundreds of thousands of fossils have been removed from the quarry and yet almost every single rock you look at has at least 1 fossil, if not dozens, on it. You can either walk through the quarry, examining larger fossils as you go, or you can sit down and get close up with all the unique little fossils. Our guide shared magnifying glasses and identification booklets and we all got lost back in time for an hour. Plus enjoy the pica that entertained me during my lunch pictured below!

We were incredibly lucky weather-wise. It was threatening rain on us all morning, which can make the fossils a bit hard to see and make the quarry quite slippery. But the rain held off until we were finally starting to pack up, and then we finished packing up in a hurry to slowly head back down. Apparently we were a bit faster than the average group, so we had a bit longer in the quarry and finished the entire hike in ~7 hours, but usually the guide allots for 8 hours to run the tour. She dropped us back at the visitor centre around 2pm.

We were all in awe the entire time and it was such a fun way to learn about natural history. I still have the guilt from going without Seth, but I can’t wait to return for Walcott Quarry. Unfortunately, it was Carolyn’s last day with us as she had to go back to work. She’d been planning to drive about halfway back to Vancouver, but with our early finish, she ending up powering the entire way back home that night. Me and Brandon enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Truffle Pig in Field instead and then returned to the Lake Louise campground to pack for our next adventure: Lake O’Hara!

Rockwall Trail Backpacking Trip Part I

October 4, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 6 Comments

Backpacking the Rockwall Trail was undoubtedly one of the highlights of my time in the Rockies this summer. There are a lot of iconic multi-day trips in the Rockies that I’ve been wanting to do and this year we landed on the Rockwall Trail. It’s a 56km backpacking trail in Kootenay National Park that is extremely popular and requires permits for camping. There are several entrances to the trail, so it’s not a bad option for beginners because you can exit out if needed, or you can just do a portion of the trail.

The full trail goes from the Paint Pots trailhead to the Floe Lake trailhead. There’s a total of 5 campsites on the trail to choose from and most people do it in 3-4 nights. You only need a park pass to visit as a day hiker, but if you’d like to visit overnight, prepare early. The campsites are released for the entire summer in March from Parks Canada and they disappear within minutes of being released. Me and Carolyn were both online trying to get permits in March and it was still a challenge to get what we wanted.

The trick to the Parks Canada site is to log in on a lot of devices (I had mine and Seth’s computers and both our phones). Before the sites release, it puts everyone in a random queue, so you’ll be in different places in line on every devices. Whatever device is the lowest in the queue, focus on that device and abandon the rest. I was actually #700 on my computer, which is really low, but I had a brain fart when booking the sites (it’s a lot of pressure!) and accidentally booked the wrong campsite for one night. But we watched for cancellations for months and were eventually able to switch to our preferred site about a week before the trip. So even if you don’t get what you want, don’t lose hope. A lot of people do cancel because you have to make the bookings so early and plans do change.

That said, I do feel very lucky to have scored 2 campsites for our 3 night trip. Me and Brandon tented together and Carolyn had her own site. We started hiking the day after attending my friend’s wedding outside Calgary, so we didn’t get an early start and it wasn’t the most well rested I’ve ever been, but fortunately it was an easy-ish day.

We dropped Carolyn’s car at the Floe Lake trailhead (which was easier said than done because it’s a small lot, so we had to wait for a spot to open up), and then all drove in Brandon’s car to Paint Pots to start the hike. It was around 1:30pm when we finally hit the trail and we had 15km to do to our first campsite at Helmet Falls.

Fortunately it was an easier day terrain-wise. It’s pretty easy forest walking and there’s limited elevation gain, only 400m over 15km. The trail starts at Paint Pots, which is characterized by the red ochre in the ground that has tons of traditional uses, particularly as a dye. We did the first 6km to the Helmet-Ochre Junction Campground relatively quickly and ate our lunch there. It’s a nice little campground next to a beautiful river, but it was completely empty when we arrived. We did pass a small group later in the day that were hiking there, but they were the only other people we saw all day and I suspect there were multiple empty sites.

We had 9km left after lunch and most of the uphill is after the campground. The entire trail is a gentle incline, but I only noticed in it for the first half an hour after our lunch break, after which it levels out. The trail continues along the river through the valley and it is very beautiful. I was a bit worried for the hike because I still have plantar fasciitis in my right foot, but I did lots of preventive care and it managed really well. Mostly that just meant that we stopped every ~4km for me to stretch and roll my foot with one of my dog’s tennis balls. So halfway to Helmet Falls we took another break along the river. It was hot out, but not too hot, and I put a lot of effort into starting this hike hydrated (which wasn’t the case with the HBC Trail), so overall I was feeling really good!

We got to the campsite after 5 hours of hiking and immediately set up camp. There were a lot more people at Helmet Falls than the ochre junction campsite, but there were still several empty sites around. The campground is located in the forest, but it’s surrounded by mountains and you can see Helmet Falls thundering down from the cooking area. Despite the hot afternoon, it cooled down really fast in the shade and we immediately had to add some layers. It ended up being our coldest night on the trail, but me and Carolyn kept warm filming some dancing reels for instagram!

On Day 2 we had the option of going to either Tumbling Creek or Numa Creek and we chose Numa Creek to get us closer to Floe Lake for our last night. It’s 20km from Helmet Falls to Numa Creek, so it was our biggest day on the trail and I was a little nervous about my foot. But Day 2 ended up being my favourite day on the trail! I’ve come to the conclusion that 15-20km of hiking is really my preferred distance for backpacking. After 20km, the day starts to feel long and your feet get sore. You have less time to actually enjoy the trail and the tiredness compounds day after day when you don’t give yourself enough time to rest.

We tried to get up early, but it was ~9:30am when we finally made our departure. The day started with a big climb, but I found the Rockwall Trail has a lot of switchbacks on the climbing sections, so overall, not too bad. Plus it was still cool. We took a break at the top of the pass before starting the highlight of the trail, the aptly named, “Rockwall”.

Floe Lake has a big reputation as being the most gorgeous place on the trip, but personally I think the actual Rockwall was my favourite. It’s easy to understand the trail name when you do it because you are essentially hiking along a giant wall of rock all the way from Helmet Falls to Floe Lake. You get to the top of the pass after 4km and then you’re hiking along the Rockwall for at least the next 10kms. It’s incredibly beautiful and I had the best time hiking it with Carolyn and Brandon.

Unlike the HBC Trail, where I was super worn out, we had a great energy on this trip. I was honestly giddy for most of it and the more we hiked the sillier the 3 of us got. I was genuinely thrilled to be hiking with my friends and the mountains brought me a lot of joy that translated into a lot of laughter while on the trail. There’s always things that characterize a trip and they’re usually challenges. When I think of my time on the North Coast Trail, I think about the tiring and muddy terrain; when I think about Assiniboine, I think about how draining the heat wave was; when I think about HBC, I think about overdoing it and injuring my foot. But the characterizing feature of the Rockwall Trail for me was how much joy it brought me, and I think that’s really special.

We spent a lot of time goofing around, singing, and filming tiktoks. Say what you want about Reels and Tiktoks, but I always have so much fun filming silly things to put on the internet and embracing that only makes me happier. I don’t actually have Tiktok anymore, but check out my Instagram for lots of fun content from this trail!

That said, I did encounter some difficulties on Day 2, they’re just not as memorable as the joy. I was on my period for this entire trip, so we had to make an emergency stop along the ridge for a period poo (just being honest) and after that I popped some advil and pepto and then I felt a lot better. It was a Tuesday, so we all celebrated Taco Tuesday for lunch, which is my favourite cold soak that I make (dehydrated ground beef and veggies). I just crunch up doritos into mine for a taco salad, but Carolyn goes the whole 9 yards and brings taco shells into the wilderness!

We had first lunch on the ridge along the Rockwall, where we met Jason, who was doing the final section of his 30 day hike along a portion of the Great Divide Trail! The GDT is a bucket list hike for both me and Carolyn (it’s 1200km of hiking through the Rockies), so we were both keen to hear about his experience and ended up making a new friend along the rest of the trail since we were all on the same track.

Then we had our second lunch at Tumbling Creek Campsite, which meant we had done 12km of trail and had 8km left. Tumbling Creek was also pretty empty, but it was earlier in the day, so I know it got busier later. We ate by the river, which is really beautiful, but very silty. We decided to cross the river in order to shave off ~1km of walking down to the bridge. It wasn’t that deep and was totally safe to cross, but it was very wide and very cold, so it was an appropriate post-lunch wake up!

Unfortunately we had a really big climb after lunch. It’s not the biggest climb on the trail by any means, but I remember it as the most draining because it was mid-afternoon and quite hot when we climbed it. But once you get to the top, there are incredible glacier views before you start your descent down to Numa Creek.

It’s a really big downhill to Numa Creek and it’s totally exposed along the side of the mountain, so I was really glad I didn’t have to climb up it. It was around 5pm by the time we got to it, so it was starting to cool down. It was hard on my feet to end the day on a huge downhill, but we made it to Numa Creek after ~9 hours of hiking. In total we tracked 21km and over 1000m in elevation gain.

Unlike Helmet Falls, Numa Creek was extremely busy. We were the last people to arrive, so it took us awhile to find a campsite. We thought they were all full at first, but then we found 2 tucked away next to each other at the back by the river and somehow I think we actually may have scored some of the nicest sites there! We all had river baths and then Jason joined us for dinner and Carolyn treated us all to ‘worms and dirt’ for dessert.

Growing up in Girl Guides, I am very familiar with ‘worms and dirt’, but it took us awhile before me and Carolyn realized that Brandon and Jason had no idea what ‘worms and dirt’ was and were reluctantly pretending to be excited about this mythical dessert. Once we explained that it’s actually chocolate pudding with crushed oreos and gummy worms, they quickly got on board! But we all agree that the worms are best eaten on the side rather than mixed in – but both me and Carolyn are purists and insisted on eating it all together. So overall, an excellent first 2 days! Stay tuned for Part II.

Ski Resort Series: Sunshine Village

March 16, 2022March 15, 2022 / Maria / 2 Comments

I’m excited to finally have some more ski resorts to write about! Last week I posted a Banff Winter Guide about my trip in early March; I had a lot of fun exploring different restaurants and shops, but of course the skiing was one of the real highlights of the trip and the main reason I went.

I’ve done a lot of skiing in BC’s interior, but this was my first time skiing in the Rockies. There are lots of different resorts to visit, but the resorts near Banff are definitely some of the most accessible. We flew into Calgary and decided to ski the “Big 3”. It was tempting to explore further and check out Kicking Horse, but the highway from Calgary to Lake Louise is really well maintained and we didn’t have the proper winter tires to go all the way to Golden.

But no problem because the ski resorts accessible from Banff are all top notch! The locals seem to all have their favourite mountain and I’ve heard arguments for why each resort is the best. The main arguments I heard for Sunshine Village is that it’s the highest, so it gets the most powder; it’s closer if you’re doing a day trip from Calgary; and on a sunny day it has some of the most epic views, including a vista all the way to Mount Assiniboine!

Unfortunately it wasn’t sunny on the day we visited, but there was about 10cm of fresh powder from the previous night, so all in all, we couldn’t complain. I had the opportunity to visit Sunshine Village in the summer in 2021 when I hiked from Mount Assiniboine, so I had already been treated to the amazing views. We couldn’t see all the way to Assiniboine on this trip, but what we could see was still phenomenal. The snow completely transforms the landscape and even though I’d been there before, it was unrecognizable to me in the winter.

It’s about a 20 minute drive from Banff and there’s a huge parking lot. If you don’t feel like driving or don’t have access to a car, there is a free shuttle that runs from Banff. Having passed this shuttle on our way to the mountain, I would recommend getting up early for it and trying to board earlier in the route from one of the hotels rather than from the main bus stop. There was a massive line for the shuttle at the main bus stop, even on week days.

How Sunshine Village differs from the other resorts is that you take a gondola up to the base from the parking lot. For this reason, the ski resort is at a higher elevation, which is why some people claim it gets the best snow of the 3 resorts. I’m not sure if it’s actually the biggest resort, but it felt the largest to me. There are a ton of lifts going up to all the surrounding mountain peaks and we tried to explore as many areas as possible. There were some clouds hanging around the tops of the peaks in the morning, so we moved around based on where the best visibility was.

We started on the Angel Express chair, which we had mixed feelings about. The skiing was great, especially in the morning when there was still fresh powder to sail through, but there were also a lot of beginners on this chair and it made us feel a little weary because a lot of them didn’t really seem to know what they’re doing. My general impression of Banff was that it attracts both beginners and experienced skiers. Skiing the Rockies was quite unlike skiing in BC for me because there is a lot more alpine in the Rockies with wide open areas and some pretty advanced skiing in some places. I’m also not exaggerating when I say we saw about 20-25 people hobbling around Banff on crutches throughout the week, so I do think some people get into trouble.

We quickly switched over to the Continental Divide chair, which was great later in the day when the clouds moved off, but it’s also one of the highest points on the mountain, so the visibility wasn’t great in the morning and it was pretty icy at the very top. Eventually we landed on the Teepee Town chair, which is Canada’s only heated chair lift – we skied a few nice runs in that area before heading off to explore another part of the mountain.

We finished off the morning on the Wawa Chair, which is a shorter chair in pretty easy terrain, but we ended up really liking this area. Emily was still getting her ski legs and preferred the shorter runs to have breaks in between. In general, I had a great time in all areas. I like skiing around the trees and I liked that Sunshine had a lot of trees without having to go down dense glade runs. I spent a lot of the morning messing around in the powder and trying to find small jumps in and around the trees.

The lodge at Sunshine Village is a bit annoying though. They don’t let you bring your backpacks inside the lodge, which I think is ridiculous, and you instead have to leave them outside on shelves. We had brought a lunch with us, so we had so stumble upstairs with our hands full of snacks. Sunshine also had the most crowded lodge, although we ate right at 12:30pm, so it might have been our timing (we are earlier or later at the other resorts).

In the afternoon we adventured over to the Mount Standish chair, which is similar to Wawa in that it’s a bit shorter. The difference is that Standish kicks you out into more alpine-like terrain, with wide open skiing and some pretty awesome views! We did a few runs there before heading back over to the Divide chair for a few more runs. We’d been playing it pretty safe in the morning, doing mostly blue runs and a few blacks, but we got a bit more adventurous in the afternoon and tried out some more blacks. In general, I found most of the black runs to be within my skill level, we would just be cautious about whether they had big moguls on them or not. The mogul-free runs were no problem, but some of them have pretty well defined moguls, so we generally tried to avoid those on longer runs, but did do a few short mogul runs.

At this point Emily was getting pretty tired and we still wanted to check out Goat’s Eye Mountain, so we decided to make our way in that direction. Like I said, Sunshine is really big and Goat’s Eye is a bit separated from most of the other lifts. However there are a lot of green runs nestled at the base of Goat, so if you’re a beginner, I recommend checking out the Jack Rabbit, Wolverine, and Strawberry Chairs, which sadly we didn’t have enough time to explore.

Goat’s Eye Mountain is definitely an experience on it’s own and felt quite different than the rest of the resort. It definitely has some more advanced skiing, but I found it did have more runs than I thought that I was pretty comfortable doing. We were only planning to do one run to say we did it, but since there was more intermediate terrain than expected, I ended up going back for a couple extra runs by myself (Emily was tired and just did one). My take-away would be to play it safe at the top of the mountain, which is alpine and very exposed (but excellent views) and get a little more adventurous further down where most of the runs are a bit easier.

We thought we were going to have to take the gondola back down to the parking lot, but discovered there is one run that goes all the way to the bottom called Banff Avenue. I got some serious deja vu on this run though because I had hiked the whole 7kms with Brandon last summer. Usually in the summer you can still take the gondola up to the top and Banff Avenue functions as a service road, but last summer the gondola was closed and we had to hike the entire thing. I can confirm, it’s a lot more fun to ski down!

So overall we had a great time at Sunshine Village! We skied on a Monday, so it wasn’t too busy and we never had to wait longer than a minute or two to get on the lift. Overall, I think Sunshine Village was my favourite of the three resorts we visited, but it could be related to the conditions (namely the powder). That said, I think it would be even more fun on a sunny day, so I think it might be the terrain that I liked. Plus it’s very large and there’s a lot to explore – I would have loved to go back for a second day. The only thing I will caution is that I can’t see Sunshine being a favourite for snowboarders. There are several flatter sections through the resort and I could see it being a bit frustrating as a boarder. But as a skier I had a lot of fun!