Banff Sightseeing

Yesterday after the conference ended we switched hotels and then drove up to the Banff Upper Hot Springs. A 1920s era building is there, fairly recently renovated, which houses changing rooms, a gift shop and café. The springs feed into a large, shallow pool with benches around the outside edge and a very shallow kiddie area to one side. The water is at 39C, so plenty warm, but not scalding. There is of course a beautiful view of the mountains poolside. We had actually intended to go for a walk first, but we couldn’t find the trail we were thinking of taking and decided it must start further down the mountain. I’m sure Jake was especially disappointed at not getting to see the rare Banff snails!

Today we drove north from Banff further into the park. First stop was Johnson Canyon. A fast running stream runs down the narrow canyon through limestone rock. The sides are carpeted in thick moss with a canopy of tall, dark evergreens. In the moss are many little plants, but it was too early for much of anything to be blooming. There were leaves of plants at least related to bunchberry, Pyrola, and an orchid. The only flower was that of a single anemone. You follow the canyon up along a paved path and catwalks (bottom photo) that are anchored into the sides of the canyon. There are 2 major areas of waterfalls, both of which you can get quite close too. We continued past the paved paths to the Inkpots (top photo), several spring-fed pools that vary in blue-green shades of color. You can see the fine silt at the bottom bubble up as the water comes through. A pebble beach along the river provided a nice place to sit and have a snack and look at all the different kinds of rocks – granite, quartz, sandstone and many that I don’t know.

Every day here has been gorgeous with blue skies much of the day and temperatures in the mid-60s. I gather that we really lucked out since it is usually rainier and colder this time of year.
Continuing on, we drove another 27 km up to Lake Louise (3rd photo), a lake in a truly spectacular setting. You can see a finger of the Victoria Glacier between mountains as well as thick snow on the peaks. We had lunch at the Fairmount Hotel, a very grand hotel at one end of the lake (see photo). It was built by the Canadian railway originally to attract wealthy customers. The lake itself has blue-green waters (4th photo), although it was mostly covered with ice still. We sat in the Lakeview Lounge for our lunch and I cannot think of a place with a better view! I tried an antipasto platter that included an aged gouda that had Sylvan in the name – couldn’t pass that up!

To back up a couple days, the conference field trip was on Wednesday. The first stop really was a gravel pit, used by the park for road maintenance. Much of the gravel comes from deposits near the road that wash down from the mountains. We saw a few elk, and lots of elk droppings. The elk are not looking their best this time of year – kind of scrawny after a long winter and losing their winter fur in clumps. We didn’t actually see many weeds since most of them aren’t up yet. We visited a couple restoration sites and heard several presentations during a lunch at the Nordic ski center where the Nordic skiing was held during the Calgary winter Olympics. That area had been mined for coal many years ago and some of the invasive plants included tansy and rhubarb from the miner’s gardens.

Friday’s talks included several by MD people! Lewis Ziska from Beltsville spoke on weeds and global climate change – great speaker. Al Tasker from APHIS spoke too about Early Detection and Rapid Response. It looks like the next WAB conference may be held on the east coast in 2010.

Tomorrow night we fly to Belgium, so it will be a few days before the next post probably.