In the realm of the Elder Things

I think that today may have been the shortest distance travelled in the span of this roadtrip. We didn't have very high aspirations because there is just so much to see and do in Banff National Park.

We started the day with a sweet buffet breakfast at the Banff Springs Hotel, with the energy received from that we proceeded to tackle the Sulphur Mountain trail, it is a 11km behemoth that ascends 700m to the top of the summit. Fortunately, about 3km in there was a gondola that takes you up the rest of the way. Now you may call me lazy, but we were pressed for time and the views were truly spectacular.

That's the whole city of Banff down there, it looks like you could crush it with a rock if you were a super villain.



 The gondola station at the top of the mountain is about 600m above the rest of Banff, which is already about 700m above sea level. The top of the summit is about 700m so you make up the last 100km by walking a board walk that climbs to the top. It's very accessible, and there are lots of little self guided tour areas to learn about the local area that high in the air.

You had a great view of the surrounding mountains from up there, and especially the slopes downward of Sulphur Mountain.

This wasn't from the gondola, this was from the top of the whole damn mountain

What I also found amazing was that there were still trees that high in the air. I enjoyed it because it gave me something to frame pictures with.

I can see why they put these things on beer cans. They ARE pretty majestic

The observation platform at the gondola station even had a Canadian Flag, it made me feel very patriotic.

You are tourists, inheritors of all the river valleys in Canada, but this mountain, this mountain is MINE

Finally, we managed to make it across the 1km boardwalk after taking a deluge of pictures. We weren't able to get to the final summit due to stability issues, but I got a nice picture of the weather station that was at the top of the mountain. It had an interesting story, the building was hauled up one piece at a time by horse in 1903 for $975. The guy put in charge of taking weather readings was given enough blank weather sheets to last 33 years, and to take the readings, he had to hike all the way to the top of the mountain without a gondola, and he did it too! It's also the spot of a 'Cosmic Radiation' station that operated for 20 years between 1963 and 1983. Apparently the top of a mountain is a good spot to study cosmic radiation.

Unfortunately standing up here didn't cause me to gain superpowers, much to my disappointment

After that we went down a crazy side mountain trail that was full of snow. We got about 2km down that until we determined we didn't have the proper gear to tackle it so we turned around. After the sweet gondola ride back down we hiked the km's back to the hotel and left Banff, it was 3:30pm.

Along the way to Lake Louise, we had a chance to see the really awesome wildlife overpasses. Basically what happened is when they twinned the highway through Banff, they had concerns about the number of potential wildlife collisions with animals trying to get over two separate highway with two lanes each. The solution was to build an overpass, but to coax animals into using it, they covered the top with organic material and let the forest do the rest. The result is this: No animals seen though...

It's like the Green party took over the Department of Transportation, but that couldn't be possible because this is a good idea.

We stopped over at Lake Louise because people kept telling me it was the most beautiful spot in all of Banff National Park. I have to say at the very least they weren't exaggerating. Although I do have to say that if I was staying at the Fairmont Lake Louise and I expected nice Alberta weather I'd be very disappointed. Suffice to say at that elevation, even in late May everything is still covered in snow, even the lake was frozen over. My goodness though the melted parts were clear, I'd love to see the place in the summer.

If you tried to swim in that water they'd be putting you in a giant glass of iced tea, and you wouldn't be the tea.

There was a really nice trail that went from the Fairmont Lake Louise all the way around the lake to the head of the whole thing. It was a few kilometres but it gave a really nice view of the surrounding mountains. We even met a few mountain climbers along the way all kitted out in gear. They were doing stuff on a level of higher intensity than us, but on a side note, the area we were in gave us nice pictures of the rest of the lake.

That little speck down there is Geoff, of course. Always doing stuff off the main trail that Geoff.

On our way back to the parking lot, we were treated to a mini-avalanche on the side mountain. I took a video of it but I can't tell if you can hear the thunder of snow falling. Unfortunately videos are too large to upload effectively through a wireless internet connection, so you'll all just have to know it exists.

Outside the park, on our way to Golden, we were intrigued by signs promising a 'natural bridge' in the area. What it turned out to be was a really neat natural formation. Many tens of thousands of years ago, there was a waterfall, over time the water eroded a tunnel under the waterfall so the water started flowing under the rock ledge it used to flow over. Over time it has started to erode the space larger and larger until eventually it will become a gorge. For right now it looks like exactly what was promised, a natural water dam that was also a natural bridge.

There was a non-natural bridge to view the rock bridge from. It was sort of like bridgeception.

Although that was a minor detour off the main trip. Unfortunately, the rest of the trip was filled with the sort of highway I dreaded about when going through the mountains. Shortly out of Yoho National Park the highway stopped being twinned and started hugging the rock wall on one side. On the other side you ask? A step valley gorge that dropped off about 500 metres if I had to guess. It was pretty well protected by a concrete barrier, but if you went through that, you'd be gone forever. That section of the drive was only about 40 minutes, and I wasn't driving, but it was still pretty scary.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or in our case, a rock and a brief, terrifying death.

We finally arrived in Golden, BC, a charming little mountain town that seems to subsist on the tourist trade. We stopped at a nice local restaurant called Eleven 22, I think it's a new operation but the food is top notch. Now we've ended up at another Super 8, which seems to be the patron saint of roadtripping. We were hoping for a straight shot to Vancouver tomorrow, but I quick look at the Canada: Coast to Coast book has revealed we may have quite a distracting ride tomorrow.