People & Places
The lure of the Canadian Rockies
It was love at first sight for Paul Beasley when he paid a first, fleeting, visit to the Canadian Rockies
The classic, Canadian-penned rock songs kept on coming: Bryan Adams, Neil Young, er, Bryan Adams again. I was listening to CJ 92, an Albertan rock station, as I drove westwards on the Trans-Canada Highway towards my first ever experience of the Canadian Rockies. But before I entered 'The Valley of the Giants', as the highway between the peaks is known, there was a nasty surprise in store.
Just before the town of Canmore, the self-styled 'gateway to the Rockies', an offensively ugly stone works loomed into view, looking like some giant concrete chemistry set. Such a monstrosity is especially out of place here because the language of the Canadian Rockies is not chemistry, but geology. It's a shame, I thought to myself, that my wizened old Welsh geology teacher didn't have these real-life examples at his disposal, otherwise I might have spent less time getting sent from the classroom to while away lessons sitting on the radiator in the corridor.
Despite knowing that the Canadian Rockies were known for their geological brilliance, I still wasn't prepared for the spectacle that unfolded. 'I've been to the Andes,' I thought, 'so how can the Rockies possibly trump them?!' How wrong I was. First up is Mount Rundle, a series of nearly 3,000-metre-high grey tablets of rock stacked up by the buckling of the earth's crust like a losing tug-of-war team. The layers are clearly visible, as if the mountain is made of immense grey wafer biscuits. I grabbed my dictaphone and started shouting into it. Or, at least, I was trying to. The problem was that I was rendered almost speechless by what I was perceiving. Admittedly I was driving and men, famously, can't multitask, especially when looking at something beautiful. But in this case it was more to do with the experience of seeing such mountainous majesty being far too big for mere words. Still, I managed a few giddy shouts into my dictaphone, shot through with pauses of at least ten seconds between each attempt to render what I was seeing into language. This feeling of being so small when faced with the evidence of continent-forming forces was both humbling and exhilarating.
I passed an emerald-coloured river snaking between massed ranks of spruce trees, then, just outside Banff, rolled by Norquay Mountain, which is flanked by clay-grey towers of rock shaped like baguettes heaved skywards by a planet-shaking collision of the continental plates. My astonishment mounted as I continued along the highway, each new mountain uniquely chiselled, angled or scored by boulder-dragging glaciers now receded from view. Despite driving dangerously slowly to give me a better chance to take in the dramatic details, I finally reached the car park near Lake Louise, and couldn't resist bounding along the short path to gaze into the lake's startlingly turquoise waters. As I peered, slack-jawed, at the great V-shaped valley Louise is pooled in, words once again almost failed me. Like a baby dribbling its first sounds, I managed a few 'wows' and little else. Mind you, no one else did much better, and the Japanese tourists were doing even worse, repeating just an elongated 'o' sound over and over.
On Mount Niblock's rocky shoulder, which forms the right-hand side of the valley, the sun shone like a torch, only to be obscured by smoky cloud, only to shine through again. It was a riveting show in the heavens. Fearful that I'd never be able to leave the scene if I didn't move soon, I prised myself away like a mollusc from a rock. I drove the short distance back to Deer Lodge, where I'd booked a room for the night. It's a hotel that probably looked hopelessly out of date ten years ago but has waited out the changing fashions for long enough so its 1920's look is now successfully retro. Dumping my bags, I went to the restaurant, an overgrown log cabin made of great hewn trunks. Despite the architecture, the staff are trussed up in spotless white shirts, black bowties and jackets. But this is Canada, so even in the poshest restaurants you come to expect a pleasant chattiness from the waiting staff – and posh-ish Deer Lodge duly obliged. I ordered caribou steak, which was served with a potato gratin layered like Mount Rundle, a yellow, beetroot-like spud called 'Yukon Gold' and a couple of raspberries that were as hairy as an old man's nose.
Not that I was paying too much attention to the food, or even to Stephanie, the dishy Ontarian waitress, because I'd intentionally sat next to the window to gawp at the peak hovering over the spruce trees across the road. Amazingly, even though my mouth continually fell open in awe as I ate, I didn't end up wearing any semi-chewed caribou. The object of my gaze was Fairview Mountain, a great tooth of grey-brown rock in the giant jaw of the Rockies. It towers 2,744 metres into the cloudy sky and, on this occasion, snow dappled its glacier-gouged flanks. Made up of several strata of bedrock, Fairview is banded by a geological garter of grey rock right across its midriff.
I held off paying the bill for a what must have felt like an eternity to poor Stephanie and continued to study the mountain like a lover's face. In fact, when I finally retired to bed I left the curtains open so I could see Fairview's silhouette in the first light of dawn. Love, after all, does strange things to a person. The next morning, I arose early and geared myself up for a walk to Lake Agnes, a small lake that lies about 4.5 kilometres from and 700 metres above Louise, on Niblock's slopes. First, I visited a local sports shop and discussed with the assistant the possibility of bumping into bears on the trail – an outside but real possibility. Despite being offered bear spray, somehow I talked myself out of the CDN$40 asking price and left armed only with a bear bell. As I set off up the lonely trail I felt decidedly vulnerable trying to scare several hundred pounds of angry bear away with an instrument a morris dancer might laugh at for being too toy-like. But, after yomping only 400 metres of the inclined, tree-lined path alongside Louise, I seemed to be more at risk of a cardiac arrest than a bear attack.
I slumped against a tree, panting, my chest as tight as a drum and pounded by rapid-fire bursts of blood, sucking in the dank air. Better keep moving, I thought, in order to keep the bell ringing, thereby alerting the hoard of hungry bears to my presence. In theory, bears don't like human company, so will make themselves scarce, unless they're surprised or desperately hungry!
After 15 further minutes of hiking, I spotted a figure ahead dressed all in white. I picked up my pace and, by a switchback in the trail, I caught up with Shizuoka, a Japanese tour guide, as I quickly found out. At least with company, I figured, any bears we encountered would have a choice of snacks – greatly increasing my chances of not being eaten. We levered ourselves onwards, shooting the breeze, and in 20 minutes or so reached Mirror Lake. Here, a perfect reflection of the aptly named Big Beehive was painted in the most delicate of watercolours. Hurrying upwards for not more than 15 minutes, skirting the compacted patches of snow, we then climbed three flights of steps and emerged on the shores of Lake Agnes.
Ice striped the shallow water of the lake like the coat of a white tiger. The snow-skirted flanks of the Big Beehive appeared to be just a stone's throw away on the opposite shore. With a tour group arriving soon, Shizuoka said her goodbyes and disappeared down the steps while I enjoyed the antics of the Golden Mantled Grey Squirrels with their natural go-faster stripes. Over hot chocolate I talked to one of the attendants at the nearby tea shop, one of many which were built to provide Swiss-style hospitality to the first visitors to the Rockies. I was advised against climbing the Big Beehive due to the depth of the snow on its slopes, and was pointed in the direction of it's younger brother – Little Beehive – instead. Short on time, I raced up the trail, the trees becoming more sparse and twisted as I approached the snow line. Slowed by being knee deep in snow at times, I clambered up a boulder-strewn route to the summit and perched on a precariously placed slab of rock to survey the staggering views. The ground dropped dizzily away beneath me, trees covered the slopes like magnetised green iron filings, which stood out starkly against the turquoise waters of Louise. From this height the lake was no more than a puddle at the foot of Fairview's broadly brushed flanks.
Turning tail, I started to make my way down. My haste, you understand, had nothing to do with the unidentified mound of poo I saw on the path on the way back to Agnes! Forty knee-creaking minutes later I was back where I started. I took one last, lingering look into the bright blue waters of Louise, then jumped in the car and started back down the Trans-Canada Highway, bound for an interview in Banff. Initially, the temptation to repeatedly glance over my shoulder and gawp at the geological greatness on show proved to be far too strong. Then, though, just east of Canmore I passed two crashes, making me think twice about the dangers of not concentrating on the traffic. Maybe these drivers, too, had been seduced by the views? After all, I mused, rock and roll is famous for premature deaths. With a Herculean effort, I finally managed to fix my gaze on the road ahead. Well, almost. In fact, I peered far into the future so I could decipher when I would be able to return to stare, wide-eyed, at Canada's real rock stars.
Paul Beasley flew with Zoom Airlines, which flies from Gatwick, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast to eight key emigrant destinations in Canada.
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