By the highpoint of the Salmo-Creston pass
Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park
Smoky views near Golden
Category: canada
Installment one from the roadtrip round BC…
Lazing around in the Lassier Hot Springs
The Shack in Wardner
Parker
Silver Spring Lake, near Elko
1500 km later and I’m back in the magical land of Banff. Although if it was really magical it would feel warmer, and the squirrels would have fantastical powers, or perhaps wear tutus.
We saw two bears. Stayed one night in a Hobo Jungle. Stayed another in a picturesque lakeside shack (where we played a cheap ripoff of Jenga called ‘Jumbling Towers’). Found an excellent bike shop/junkyard in New Denver, where we bought one old bike, and got another plus a frame for free. And lazed around in hot springs.
Banff is a little town in the Banff National Park.
The stats
Banff NP was Canada’s first National Park, and as one of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, it’s also a World Heritage Site. At an altitude of 1,463 m Banff is the highest town in Canada. Any further growth from its current population of seven or eight thousand (depending on the season) has been restricted due to environmental concerns – the National Park is one of the most visited in North America. The Canada Census of 2006 gave the median age in the town as 29.6, thanks in no small part to the huge number of 18-30 year old internationals over here on working holiday visas (apparently Banff can be quite popular with the 18 year old crowd, as being in the province of Alberta the legal drinking age is 18 – versus 19 for British Columbia).
The view
On my first day in Banff we hiked up the Sanson Peak of Sulphur Mountain, one of the scenic mountains that are conveniently scattered around the town. At 2256 metres it towers above Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko (2228 m). And the photo above shows the view from the peak. Looking down into the Bow Valley, you can see the township of Banff nestled next to Tunnel Mountain, and the Bow River winding along next to it.
The view out to Stawamus Chief from the Spit.
And now looking down to the Chief, Howe Sound and Squamish from another vantage point. Taken on the hiking trail to Elfin Lakes – which is part way to Mt Garibaldi, the ever present mountain which lurks above you as you sit in Squamish town. Unless it’s cloudy. So in other words you may see it once or twice a year.
So now after a week in Squamish (with the bunny feeding, the hiking, the climbing, the squirrels, the chipmunks, the Scattegories, the bath robe parties, the bicycling round town, the Walmart visits, the inaugural Tim Hortons visit, the sitting in traffic on the Sea to Sky because their blasting to widen the road had made large rocks fall of the existing bits of road reducing it to one lane, the wandering around Whistler, the discovery of a very gold and shiny puffy vest in the North Face store, and the complete absence of any bear or cougar sightings) a trip over to Banff on the mighty Greyhound beckons…