I stay with my sister, Mary, over New Years, and have a great visit over several days. I help out by taking Pamela to hockey practice (I would not want to run into her on the ice - or, more accurately, I would not want her to run into me!), fixing a few meals and manage to get some exercise at the local fitness club.
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Saturday, Jan 5 - Red Deer to Banff
Being somewhat restless by nature, and not wanting to intrude on her family too much, I look for something that will get me out of their house and also give me some good exercise. I figure Banff is a good place to look. I drive to Banff and snow camp. It's cold enough to freeze beer, but not cold enough to freeze wine, and setting up my tent in the dark, when it's windy.... Let's just say I'm glad to finally be inside my tent, really glad. And the thought crosses my mind more than once of bailing out on this luny idea of snow camping and finding a nice warm hotel just down the road.
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Sunday, Jan 6 - Banff to Bryant Creek Shelter
I meet the rangers in Banff and discuss possible back country trips, settling on snowshoeing into Mt. Assiniboine. The ranger says the main lodge is closed but that they use the Naiset Huts over the winter and I would be able to "drop in". I plan to spend one night at the Bryant Creek Shelter Cabin, two nights at Assiniboine and a night at Bryant Creek on the way out. By the time I buy supplies, rent snowshoes and drive to the trailhead, it's 2PM. I feel a little out of place on my snowshoes as I see at least forty people on skis in the first two hours and no-one using snowshoes. It gets pretty sparse after that and I'm using my headlamp for the last mile to the Bryant Creek Shelter.
The shelter is great. They have a wood burning stove with tons of cut wood. The only issue I have with the place is that if you want to keep the fire producing heat, you need to get up every three hours and put more wood in.
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Monday, Jan 7 - Bryant Creek Shelter to Mt. Assiniboine
Dawn comes late, it's 9AM before I'm on the trail. I drag my camera, long lens and tripod with me and am looking forward to some good shots in the early light. I'm not disappointed, as it snowed a couple inches last night and everything looks pristine with a coating of fresh snow. I see many rabbit tracks and something that looks like ski tracks with a person walking behind, sinking in to their knees. Poor soul, it is hard work "post-holing" though deep snow like this.
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| Assinaboin |
The trail, which up to this point has been in the open, passing through a meadow, starts to wind through trees, getting ever more hemmed in on both sides. Soon, there is naught but enough room for skiers or snowshoers passing in single file. This increases the heart rate another few notches, as does the appearance of many more bear trails and a particularly onerous Grizzly sign, saying, "Hikers have been mauled in this area, Use Extreme Caution." Great! I'm committed at this point, it's late in the afternoon and I'm only a couple miles from Assiniboine. I press on.
I've never before been so glad to see a lodge. In addition to my fears about bears, I've run out of water and can now fire up my stove, melt some snow and make some tea. As the ranger had warned me, the lodge is all buttoned up for winter, but there is a table upon which to set up my stove and make some tea. Now to find the Naiset Huts and get checked in. I hope they have wood heaters in the huts.
I find the huts, but the place is deserted. I cross over to a large ranger cabin. It's deserted as well. I'm on my own. I try some of the doors but the main buildings are all locked. I have visions of spending the night on the porch of one of these places, freezing as I listen for approaching bears. Fortunately they have bear lockers which are unlocked, so I remove the food from my pack and load into a bear locker. Ahhhhh, I've found one of the Naiset Huts which is unlocked, perhaps for winter hikers like me. I quickly set up my sleeping bag as the sun goes down. Unlike the Bryant Creek cabin, there is no wood to be found here.
I have a hard time getting my butane stove to light and decide to pull the canister into my sleeping bag, warming it and making it easier to light in the morning. Over the course of the night, I keep getting up and pulling other things that would be best kept warm in my sleeping bag, socks, gloves, water, any unused clothes (although I'm wearing virtually everything I have with me). Any time I move during the night I bump into something cold, hard and lumpy. It's an unpleasant night but I'm so glad to be in the hut.
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Tue, Jan 8 - Assiniboine to Byrant Creek Shelter
It's an ugly day, with overcast and what looks like snow on Mt Assiniboine. I change my original plans of spending another night here and decide to exit post haste. I was able to find my way here quite easily by following ski tracks through the trees. If it snows a foot and covers yesterday's snowshoe tracks on the trail, it would be much more difficult to find my way back.
A light dusting of snow throughout the day lets me identify which of the bear tracks I encounter are fresh. I encounter dozens of these bear trails on the way back to Bryant Creek, almost all of which are extremely fresh. Something big is very closeby, probably several big things are very close by and they probably have a good bead on me as I make my way through the meadow by the Bryant Creek Ranger cabin. I wish I had skis. I would be able to move about three times faster and get clear of this area. I set my camera up for rapid frames per second. I figure if I get charged by something, I won't be able to get away, so I might as well get some great shots of it. Perhaps it will be the last record of what happens to me.
It occurs to me that bears usually hibernate, so the relatively mild winter to this point must be responsible for keeping one or more of them from hibernating this year. It's either that, or one of them is REALLY hungry and can't sleep (hey, it's happened to me before). No matter, my heart thumps all the way back to the Bryant Creek Shelter, and I am very glad to enter and shut the door behind me, especially when I see that there are tracks all around the cabin. I breakout the pee bottle as there will be no midnight visits to the privy this evening.
I make it back to my car without incident, and go into Banff to talk to the ranger. I registered with the ranger on the way in, so that if I did not show up after four days, they would come looking for me. I relate my bear stories, showing her the bear track pictures in my camera. She looks perplexed for a while, muttering that the bears are hibernating, then her face lights up as she solves the riddle. These are moose trails! I figure that all the extra adrenaline I used was all for naught, although I'm sure it shortened my hiking times. It 's a few days later when relating the story to Gary Dunkley, that he says, "You do realize that twice as many people are killed by moose every versus bears?"
