Snow, Bears and Billy Joel

The weather forecasters in Canada leave a lot to be desired. I'm sure their argument would be that weather in the mountains is unpredictable, that each valley can have its own micro climate, and that the weather changes more quickly than people can check their forecasts - in short, that predicting the weather in the Rockies is a difficult thing to do.

I would be forced to disagree. I do not think typing in the words "overcast, with a high probability of precipitation", and then copying those words each day, should be too much of a challenge. But apparently it does present problems for some people, because, while the weather never really changes, the forecasts certainly do. I think the forecasters might be a bit like sports journalists, always wanting to be the one who picks the upset. In the same way as there is no glory is picking Roger Federer to win Wimbledon, there is no praise to be gained from predicting cloudy, rainy weather in Canada. Everyone wants to be the one that successfully predicted a sunny day, leading to many more sunny forecasts than sunny days.

Before we were aware of the low reliability of the weather forecasts, we relied on them to plan a hike. We waited two days until the weather was predicted to improve, then set out for Jacques Lake, a scenic 12km walk from the trail head, where we planned to spend two nights. The weather forecast for day one was 13 degrees and clearing, while day two was predicted to be a positively balmy 17, and sunny.

When we set out, it was already apparent that 13 degrees was optimistic, and the clearing had not yet begun. Nothing an extra layer of clothing couldn't fix though, so off we went, still hoping for better conditions.

I've posted some photos of the hike, so I will spare you the flowery descriptions of breathtaking scenery, and simply say that surrounds were very much what you'd expect from picture books of the Rockies. Small, still and isolated lakes, surrounded by steep hills absolutely covered in pines trees, with huge rock walls climbing out of the forests and leading to summits that were, for the most part, hidden in the clouds.

By the time we arrived at the campsite, the only thing that was clear was that the weather was not going to clear, and that it was not remotely close to 13 degrees. It had in fact begun to snow. Not real snow that stays on the ground, but just small flakes of frozen rain.

A new experience for me was the bear pole in the campsite. When you camp in a campground, you are required to leave all food and related items, as well as toiletries, in your car, to avoid attracting bears and other wildlife. In the back country, you obviously don't have a car, so designated campsites are equipped with a cable and pulley system that lets you suspend your food in the air. All the food goes into one backpack, which is hooked onto a steel cable, and pulled up between two trees. As the bears can climb trees and jump surprisingly high (allegedly) the food has to be at least 5 meters in the air and two meters away from the tree.

Having safely secured our food we made some conversation with the only other hiker staying at the campsite that night. An aspiring biologist, he was researching frogs for Parks Canada. He shared an interesting piece of information with us. If you want to see a bear, the best place to do so is actually by the side of the road. This is because bears seek out open grass where berries grow, and most of them have long since figured out that along the highways in the national parks are hundreds of kilometers of nature strip, bursting with the berries they seek. I was struck by the irony that by trekking as far as possible into the wilderness, I had apparently reduced my chances of encountering the wildlife. Kate, who, on being told that if a bear attacks a group of two or three people, it will always attack the smaller one first, recently purchased a canister of bear spray (capsicum spray), seemed mildly relieved.

We went to bed that night still hopeful that the weather would clear overnight and the promised sun would come. Instead, it got seriously cold overnight. While I had struggled with the boats in Central America, where Kate was very much in her element, the mountains saw a role reversal. Kate, it turned out, was not designed for the cold. She eventually got to sleep wearing two pairs of thermals, an ice breaker, a fleece and two (hers and mine) down jackets, which meant she barely fit into her sleeping bag.

Despite the cold, I wasn't entirely prepared for what greeted me outside the tent the next morning. Yesterday's half snow had turned into very real snow, and the world as I saw it was covered in 15 to 20 cm of the white stuff, which was still falling heavily. It was quite early, but I sensed that this was not how an 18 degree and sunny day would be likely to start. If I'd been skiing, it would have been the best day of my life.

A quick look around the campsite made clear that hanging around for a day making short walks and enjoying the outdoors was not really an option, and we had no trouble deciding to head back to civilization. While we couldn't stay there for a whole day, we could still enjoy the snow while we got ready and packed up. Again, there are photos, but I'll say that it was beautiful. The dense green forest had been transformed so completely that it was like waking up in a completely different place, where everything was clean and white instead of the slightly foreboding dark greenery.

As we hiked back and considered stopping for lunch, the unthinkable happened. It stopped snowing, and within twenty minutes there was as much blue sky over our heads as there was cloud. That triggered an almost euphoric feeling in both of us, as we soaked up some much missed vitamin D and admired the Rockies that finally looked the way they do in the postcards.

It didn't last, and by the time we had finished lunch and taken a large handful of photographs, the clouds set in again and the snow restarted. By then we were close to the car though, and unconcerned by the weather. While it had been only 40 minutes out of two days, overall I think we were lucky with the weather - the chance to see everything covered in fresh snow and glistening in the sun far outweighed the disappointment at the cold and cloud.

As we drove back to town, and the snow turned to rain, we had one more stroke of luck. We came up to an apparent accident on the road. There were three or four cars pulled over on the shoulder, hazard lights flashing. As we got closer, we saw that hadn't been an accident - the cars had all pulled over to watch as, unconcerned by his (or her) audience, a black bear feasted on berries, right by the side of the road.

It's actually been a few days since the hike now, and in that time we've seen a total of 5 bears, including one grizzly. I therefore retract any snide remarks I made regarding excessive warnings about bear safety.

Most of the bears we saw in the Icefields Parkway, the 200km road that goes from Jasper to Banff and claims, repeatedly, to be the best scenic road in the world. Well, Canadians claim that. Obviously the road itself doesn't claim anything.

It's hard to argue with the claim. Stops along the way include the Athabasca waterfalls and the Columbia Icefield, the largest glacier in North America. At the glacier there are signs to mark out the point which the glacier reached in each past decade. The sign for 1900 is hundreds of meters from the current glacier, and even since 1980 it has retracted by about 50 meters ( do assume it grows back out a bit each winter). More spectacular than the individual stops are the mountains either side of the road, which follows the Continental Divide, the very spine of the Rocky Mountains.

At the far end of the parkway are Lake Louise and Morain Lake. These two lakes must provide as many postcards as any other place on the planet. Anyone who has picked up the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald has seen a picture of Lake Louise, on a clear blue day (I wonder how long that photographer had to wait around) adverting organized tours to Canada.

Before checking out the lake, we checked into the local hostel and dropped into the attached bar for a late lunch / early dinner. It was happy hour, so we stayed for another beer. By then it had started raining again, so we pushed back the lake visit till the next day, and stayed for another beer. Before we knew it, the evening's main event kicked off. Karaoke.

You probably know where this is heading. Let me simply say that, despite claims sung (under a broad definition of singing) to the contrary, neither Kate nor I is in fact, the Piano Man, and we owe both Billy Joel and anyone present at Lake Louise HI last night an apology. When I first met Kate's sister, she told me that if I ever heard Kate sing, I would probably break up with her. Obviously, I didn't, but I can see how Rachel might have thought that I would. But something about stones and glass houses is coming to mind, so I should move on.

We did visit the lakes the next day, but with somewhat reduced levels of enthusiasm. It was such a familiar view that I felt as if I'd seen Lake Louise before, only in much nicer conditions. Moraine lake just didn't seem ready for tourists yet. In summer it is filled with water melting from the surrounding mountains, and its turquoise colour contrasts with the grey rock and white snow caps on the mountains that rise directly out of it. When we got there, the snow hadn't melted yet, so the lake was half empty. What water there was in the lake was still frozen, and covered by the same greying snow as everything around it, so it was hard to see where the lake started and finished. This has been a slightly frustrating theme of this trip so far - that June is still considered Spring here, and the Summer conditions don't really start until the latter half of July.

In other news, I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that I am rather enjoying writing this blog. As it turns out, there is a deeply frustrated writer somewhere inside me. Travel writing is great, but the football world cup is coming up - and when the world cup is happening, I have a very hard time thinking about anything else. With that in mind, and because I'm a member of the twitter / facebook inspired generation that believe any thought they have should instantly be shared with the whole world, I've started a second blog, all about the world cup. To create some interest in Australia, my first entry is my assessment of the Socceroos prospects. http://max-worldcup2010.blogspot.com/
I don't want to be spamming everyone's email, so I won't be sending out any notifications when I update this one - unless you ask me to.