Oct 29

I’ve always loved Banff.  Our oldest (1885) and most visited (3.1 million visitors per year) National Park, it is a jewel in the Canadian landscape.  The best way to arrive is driving from Calgary.  Despite seeing the mountains approach as you drive for miles across the dry brown prairies, it still amazes when they suddenly surround you.  Like some surprising and sudden optical illusion, you blink in Canmore and the Rockies appear like magic, towering over the highway in all their snow-covered glory.

Banff captivates you with every vista.  Icy streams tumble down rocky slopes, racing to join the turquoise Bow River as it threads its way across the narrow valley.  Snowy mountain tops glow in afternoon sunlight, beaming golden light over the darkening forests.  A big bull elk, splendid in his crown of antlers, guards the entrance to his winter pasture – the quiet, hibernating golf course.  His herd, a hundred or more elk all dressed in their woolly winter finery, graze lazily across the waiting greens.  Two young bucks stage a noisy, vigorous duel, the hormones of youth flaring just beyond the reach of the lord of the manor.  Steam rises softly into the bitter-crisp night air above the thermal pools. The granite face of dark forbidding Mount Rundle towers above the glowing village at its feet.  How could you not fall under the spell of this postcard scenery?

But it’s cold here, winter rapidly approaching - the skiff of snow on the trees, the frozen borders of the river, the hats and mitts of the few off-season tourists.  We opted for a downtown hotel with fluffy duvets instead of braving the below freezing temperatures in the camper for two nights.  Besides, we could walk home from the steamy, fragrant local restaurants!  

We spent the days hiking – along the Bow River and up the steep ascent to Johnston Canyon.  The river is just beginning to ice over, with rising mounds of ice along the rocky shores and fragile translucent islands drifting along the edges.  By the waterfalls in the canyon, great walls of icicles hang from the rocky ledges like frigid cathedral pipe-organs in the wilderness. The borders of the falls are swollen with white spray-driven castles of ice, gradually growing to close over the moving water in time for winter sleep.  Fat squirrels quarrel with magpies over cones and seeds, and tracks through the snowy underbrush reveal martens and bears continue to prepare from winter. 

With Banff so close to winter, we head west, through Vermillion Pass in our first scanty snowfall, descending into the drier, warmer Columbia Valley.  A brief afternoon stop to bask in Radium Hot Springs, before finishing our day at Fairmont Resort, south of Invermere.  We luxuriate in another nighttime dip in the pools here before bedding down in our cozy camper.  Campsites are in short supply, but we have sketched out a route that leads past three more hot pools, and gives us two more nights to camp before the final push for home.  Too short a time we both feel, for the end to our excellent adventure.