The Journey to and from Lake Louise, Alberta

Hello all and thanks for tuning into another episode of the Findlater's travel adventures. 

As the article title would suggest this week we took advantage of the long weekend here in Canada and decided to go for a road trip to see an ex-university buddy of Kyrans.

This blog has been co-authored by Kyran and myself, although more from Kyran than me.

I have to warn that this is quite a long adventure as there were so many things to do and see along the way, and there are many pictures to show you! 

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The map below is a rather rough map of the route that we took between Salmon Arm and Lake Louise and as you can see the estimated travel time is 3 hours and 30 minutes (but we stopped off along the way so double that).

The Last Spike

There was a nice little rest stop on the way to Revelstoke which had the memorial and tourist spot where the last spike was. 

This meant the last iron spike driven into the rails to join the East and West Canadian railway tracks in 1885.  

Supposedly there was rebellions and financial problems and all sorts of craziness with the Canadian railway, read more about the Last Spike in the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Spike_%28Canadian_Pacific_Railway%29

The photos below show a depiction that was the site of the last spike being driven in, and a plaque that was there.

Three Valley Gap Hotel and Heritage Ghost Town

While driving along we came to a nice and rather large establishment on the edge of a small lake along the highway. It was called Three Valley Gap, and was a red painted array of buildings starting at the lake front and extending back in groups of shopfronts until it reached a “ghost town” themed heritage display. 

The hotel section was adjacent to the water, and we first went there to take pictures of the lake. The hotel seemed run down – cracked pavement, overgrown gardens, broken light fittings and weathered red paint, bleached by the sun.

We saw a great big old tractor in the main courtyard of the hotel (took some photos for Pop) – supposedly one of the best kept (and continually operating) tractors of its time. The tractor looked good to me! We left soon after, as the shops were not interesting to us, and we didn't want to pay to see the heritage area. 

The heritage area was basically just what Mercedes’ grandparents place looked like anyway – full of old and amazing farm machinery.

Electric Recharge Station

We stopped in at Revelstoke’s Information Center to get some brochures and when we parked, came face to face with an electric car recharge station! 
These are dotted around the landscape, and also hosted at some university campuses – they allow people with electric cars to “refuel” their vehicles to continue their journey. 

Canada seems to be really embracing the electric vehicle revolution, and has put some effort into these recharging stations. There is still a long way to go, in battery technology and the infrastructure to support super-fast charging stations along the major routes people take, before there will be a large adoption of these cars. 

Just like the chicken and the egg problem – do you build electric car infrastructure, hoping that people then see the support and go out and buy the cars, or do you wait for enough people to buy the cars to make the cost of infrastructure viable and THEN put the charging points in?

People on bikes
On a side note we noticed that along the highway there were many random cyclists all set with their sleeping bags on the side of their bikes. 
In the words of Merc's Spanish Family "aupa valiante!" (Good on ya!)

Lake Louise and the Chateau

We went up to visit the lake on Sunday morning after a mostly restless night at the Lake Louise hostel. 

The morning was cold and overcast, and a bit windy! There were moderate amounts of tourists clogging the walkways, but nothing compared to the amount we encountered on the way back from our walk around the lake – the place was swarming with tourists, and we were glad we came early. 



The sun only just came out on our walk back from the far end of the lake, so we did end up with some sunnier shots than those we got in the morning.

The Chateau looked pretty fancy, but showed signs of age – weathering and cracked concrete. It was certainly not a young establishment, and just like Three Valley Gap has probably not had a particularly successful business. 

The rooms go for $500 a night or more, so good luck getting customers!

The lake was originally called Emerald Lake by the first explorers who found it, as they were amazed at the green colour of the water. 

The green colour comes from the mineral-rich silt which comes down from the melt water off the surrounding mountain peaks. The lake itself sits at 1800m above sea level, which is really high up!

Another cool thing about the water - it's cold all year round and due to the cooler temperatures the fish never have stunted growth and remain very small, and so the lake was known as 'little fish lake' to the local Native Americans.

Banff

We took Toby to a local town called Banff, further East into Alberta for an adventure and some food. We visited the Information Center first to get some maps and info about what we could possibly do there (A new hobby of Merc's). The town was bustling with activity, and every street was jammed with tourists in cars, also making it hard to find parking and navigate in the small town. 

We managed to find an Irish Pub for a nice pub lunch and some pints of Guinness. There was a very cold breeze blowing through town, so we didn't walk around too much. 

The Photos above are of an Elk with a Doe (female Deer) that we spotted in the woods on the side of the road on our way into Banff. 

The nearby forest area at the back side of Banff was closed due to bear activity, but there was plenty we could see if we had some more time, such as some hot springs and the Fairmont Chateau. We decided that it was time to take Toby back to Lake Louise and managed to get a game of Foosball in, some throwing of breadstuff, and photography of squirrels before saying our good byes. It was good to catch up with Toby, a fellow Aussie Engineer abroad!



Above left: Tree Squirrel , 
Above Right: Ground Squirrel

Due the long hours of sunlight now that it is getting to summer here in Canada, the trip home allowed for quite a few daylight stops despite it being 7-8 pm.

Bears!
We saw 2 black bears between home and Lake Louise. Merc was interested in practicing her skillz, so she proclaimed that if the highway represented a transect through a forest region, then we can estimate bear population density in the area. 2 bears occurred in a 330km transect, meaning for each linear kilometer there is 0.006 bears! This might suggest for a guaranteed bear sighting you would need to examine a 166 kilometer squared area, or a square with equal sides of 12.9km. We did not spot any brown bears, so perhaps they are a lie, or the equivalent of the Australian Drop Bear?

Spiral Tunnels

The spiral tunnels were a rest-stop off the side of the highway near Mount Cathedral, and showed how the trains manage to climb such steep inclines to get around the mountains. 




In the picture (Above) you can only just see a concrete lower entrance to a train tunnel (Bottom right) and then the higher level exit is clearly visible above and to the left of the lower one. 

Between them, the tunnel snakes around and gains elevation, “spiralling” around and allowing the train to gain elevation in a reasonably short area, before it comes out and goes under the highway before entering yet another spiral tunnel system to get more elevation and travel along the side of Mount Cathedral. Pretty cunning engineering! 

They had issues with the steam coming out of the trains and forming icicles on the roof of the tunnels, so they had to get guys to go out and bash the icicles off, and some train cars had large metal poles coming out of the top to help break the ice forming on the tunnel roofs as they passed through.

Giant Cedar Boardwalk

We stopped off at the Giant Cedar Boardwalk rest stop on the way home, and went for a lovely 500m walk through an “old-growth” forest of Cedar trees, some 500+ years old. 

The trees were quite big, and the undergrowth comprised of ferns and mosses. 

Supposedly Caribou come and eat the lichen just before winter from these old forest areas.  

Mountain Gallery

We saw mountain upon mountain – all massive and equally beautiful. They were extremely tall, looming ominously overhead, seemingly shooting up out of the ground all around us. It was amazing to travel between the mountains, and I've never seen anything like it! 

We have a collection of pictures of the various mountains we encountered, however the sheer enormity of these mountains is not efficiently conveyed through pictures. Just imaging really big mountains when you see the pictures.

This photo (Above) shows the magnitude of the Landslips/Landslide that can occur in these areas. 

Also you can imagine these areas are massive avalanche zones in the winter time. 

Here you can see an Avalanche ready to happen (Giant shelf of snow on the back mountain)

That is about all the random mountain photos, the next bunch of random photos are more from Lake Louise and other parts of our adventure.

Breakfast!!

It think that this bird was frozen to this post, it just sat there singing when Merc got close and it didn't even look like moving and didn't care for the bread she was trying to give it. 

In Focus, out of Focus  - Kyran trying to teach Merc how to use Manual focus

Forest Fires are a big thing here, and can be devastating as there is a huge forestry industry in these areas (not in the national park area, this was outside of the Yoho/Banff national park)

A photo with the man we went to see!!

Finally, here are some panoramas of the whole adventure for this weekend.

That is all from us for this blog. There was a lot that we did not get to see, and so hopefully we will explore those in the near future and will keep you posted. The next mission will likely involve a quest to try out all the nearby hot springs!

Also a shout out to my Brother Curly, Sister Gracia and Mother-Duck who all had their birthdays in the last week or two. Hope you all had a good one! Don't grow lichen like the tree shown below!