#waterton canyon

[goddesseris-posts]

Loving life 🌞

[giogiosbizarreadventures]

Waterton Canyon, Colorado

[swkrullimaging]

Bighorn Lambs in Waterton Canyon

[mechadress]

Big Horn Sheep cutting off access to the rest rooms

[nfornaomi]

My parents, Rob, and I spent two days in Waterton and we had fantastic weather and a fair amount of wildlife sightings.

On the first day we caught sight of bison at the bison paddock loop, and then made our way to red rock canyon with the intent of walking the short loop around the canyon. About 50m into the hike, we paused to admire a deer smack dab in the middle of the road. It eventually moved off to the side, and we began to pass, but then it suddenly darted away super fast. Rob and mom saw a black blur chasing it, and it turned out to be a bear cub 😅. So that excursion ended rather abruptly! We instead did the Blakiston Falls trail which was nice and thankfully bear-free. After that we hiked to Crandell Lake which was a boring 1km from the parking lot to the trailhead, but the lake itself was beautiful.

Capped off the day with dinner outside where a curious deer made a cameo appearance 😁.

[northameicanblog]

Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada: Waterton Lakes National Park is in southern Alberta, Canada, bordering Montana’s Glacier National Park. It’s known for its chain of lakes, including the large Upper and Middle Waterton lakes, flanked by the Rocky Mountains. The Red Rock Parkway crosses the prairie to the small Red Rock Canyon. Bison graze near the Bison Paddock Loop Road. In Waterton village, a pathway offers close-up views of Cameron Falls.

[mutant-distraction]

Reid Neureiter

Big rams and a big collision. Waterton

Canyon, Colorado. Rocky Mountain

Bighorn Sheep during the rut.

[natures-moments]

Red Rock Canyon at Waterton lake National Park, Canada

[calochortus]

USA, Colorado: Waterton Bighorn Sheep - Photo #3 (in Explore 4/11/2023) by Doug Craig Travel Photography Via Flickr: This photo is from a visit to Waterton Canyon near Genesee, Colorado, in February of last year. Quote Of The Day: "The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were." David Brinkley (1920-2003)

[cedarboughs]

Hiking Journal: The West Coast Trail

Day VII: Last Steps

Darling River to Nanaimo

One last giant banana slug, the biggest and most beautiful and inspiring yet, greeted us in the breakfast table to bid us farewell to the West Coast Trail I suppose.

I had to rest in one of the hammocks made from washed-up fishing line. The craft these must have taken in the midst of a trek like this! And they are comfy and give the pirate vibes again.

We waded the Darling after walking briefly up its beach-to-forest canyon a couple hundred metres to see the falls.

Then two kilometres of Tideshelf Tango to Michigan Creek, the last campsite, named for an American wood steamer sank in the last years of the nineteenth century — to no loss of life, thanks to the rescue road built in the mourning for the Valencia.

It was misting out of a low sky and the tide was all the way out* so I walked far out the tideshelf into what the map coloured blue, where clams spread like clover.

Two kilometres past Michigan we visited the Pachena Point Lighthouse. This is the westernmost post on the whole Trail. Looking out to sea, it’s open water all the way to Japan.

A short and easy kilometre past there, I was beginning to tire a bit. We broke for lunch at a point overlooking two busy sea lion haulout rocks. The smell of the sea lions wafted by on occasion, but the symphony of barking and yapping from the territory-seeking older bulls and milk-seeking cubs kept up all through our time there. We ate wraps with envelope tuna and cheese that wasn’t quite so hard as when I packed it up.

Then, walking. Nine more long kilometres of inland trail, well maintained and easy to walk, but feeling endless. Final stretches either sap last bits of energy as you feel the cumulative weight of every step it took to get there; or else, there comes an infusion of energy from knowing the end is within reach. I felt both of these ways through those last nine kilometres, mostly depending on whether I was walking up or downhill. Along the way were carved stumps and, somehow, an abandoned motorcycle rusting right on the trail just out of the ferns.

This isn’t in my journal but I remember at one rest I made a point of pondering the tree across the trail. I got me thinking about cedars, which is a thing I do often. I traced with my eyes the striations of fluted bark falling vertically down the trunk like water over falls, then indeed tumbling over rock and soil and older wood just as water would. It’s no great revelation that the Great Bear Rainforest feels so remarkably alive from its abundance of life-giving water and how life piles upon and gives life to other life in all its layers. Coming from the dry prairie, that was the great novelty and reason I so loved the rainswept Pacific drainages. But looking at that plicata I thought, here is a tree that more than any other of its kin, whom I’d see as living extensions of the earth, here is elemental water given towering form. In Waterton I’d seen trees born of fire growing back in the valley, and trees of air wracked by high alpine winds. Every element grows life in time. That’s why a lawn of cut grass feels like such an abomination. How many flower blooms, clover spreads, or rippling waves of seedpods lay aborted in that featureless spread of dying yellow-green? How many tasty free-growing sources of dandelion greens and flowers and milk and coffee and wine? I don’t know how people can choose to live in suburbs among that. Even in a proper city there’s an organic life to the growth of towers like trees and an exploratory sense to the karsts of skyscrapers and an ecology to the succession of streets and neighbourhoods. It’s amazing what can grow when left to its own nature, beyond the human desire for control. It you let it alone, it will surely grow.

A few final tall ladders for good measure in the last kilometre looking over Pachena Bay. This was the harder of the two ways through the section we’d taken on day 0.9, but the tide was back up. Sorry Wallace, but the low tide is only a constant endpoint in a novel that ends there.**

Then we were done, and there was the car at the trailhead.

It was a long drive across the Island to Nanaimo, although really, to call the first mileage-marked seventy-five kilometres to Port Alberni “a long drive” of a couple of hours after taking the last full week to do that distance seems unfair. Past Alberni we finally did stop at Cathedral Grove to keep our legs from totally seizing up as we sat eating chips in the indulgent languor of off-Trail life. “The Big Tree” at Cathedral Grove, a six-metre-diameter Douglas fir, was indeed a bit bigger than all those cedars and spruce we walked among along the Trail, but it was strange walking along interpretive paths so flat and maintained.

On the way into Nanaimo we stopped for takeout pizza. I can talk about blackened fresh caught cod and rare freshwater crab but let’s be real here— that tandoori chicken pie eaten on a TravelLodge bed while waiting for the shower was the most satisfying meal I ate in B.C.

* Wallace, D. F. (1996). Infinite Jest. Little, Brown. Well, almost.

**Yes I know that you could have a whole argument about where or even whether Infinite Jest “ends.”

[thorsenmark]

Anderson Peak Under Overcast Skies in Waterton Lakes National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: While at the Red Rock Canyon area in Waterton Lakes National Park with a view looking to the west to the peaks and ridges of Anderson Peak and the Clark Range. My thought on composing this image was to have the mountainside and peak fill the image, but have a little bit of the overcast skies above as a backdrop.

[sleepyheaddreamer]

Red Rock Canyon, Waterton National Park, Canada

[swkrullimaging]

Battling Bighorns

[faymcwrath]

Red Rock Canyon - Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada Journey to Red Rock Canyon in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada and immerse yourself in nature's vibrant masterpiece. Don't miss this breathtaking experience.

[nfornaomi]

We spent a long weekend in Waterton and it was perfection! The weather, the views, the cottage, and the BEAR SIGHTING!!! I'll share the bear video in another post, but let's just say watching two cubs play while a mom is loitering nearby (from the safety of our car) was super cool.

We saw plenty of bison at the bison paddock, hiked Bear's Hump (short but sweet), walked Red Rock Canyon and Blakiston Falls, and enjoyed excellent barbecue dinners from our comfy cottage. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

[saaraeliisavaris]

Red Rock Canyon - Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada

Escape to the enchanting Red Rock Canyon - a hidden gem in the stunning Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada. Prepare to be amazed.