Road trip to Alberta, bears and trees

[If you cant see the fabulous photos let me know, there may be a technical fault...] For a while I dreamt of a train ride through the Rockies to Jasper National Park and signing up to a 3-day canoeing expedition down the Fraser river. To be honest, wouldn't I have got bored and sore? Anyway the train timetable and being a long time out of Vancouver just didn’t fit our schedule. Yet... what we ended up doing in four days was extraordinary. Read on.

The Hertz office on Granville Street is run by a very grumpy couple. After paying an extra $20 a day for a car we could fit into, we were off, tracing a figure of 8 in 22 hours which we made into 26 through detours. OK, not detours but missed turnings and returning for a forgotten wallet.

For me the weather has been the most unexpected feature. I brought scarf, gloves, hat and a lot of intimate layers for the high mountain cold. So yes, I feel foolish in this mix of summer Mediterranean and

tropical humidity, not just in Vancouver but up in the Rockies. I’ve not been out of shorts and I’m loving it.

Two hours out of Vancouver is the Whistler Squamish Cultural Centre. A film and tour of the exhibitions from Jay, who emphasises the centrality of cedar wood and bark to building and clothing and canoe-building. I'm as interested in the gorgeous clothing designs and craftwork. Whistler’s not much else in summer, though it’s the biggest skiing centre in the winter.

A little bit further on – ie less than 100 miles – is the town of Pemberton, where google shows hardly any roads except the one we want carrying on through the valleys up to Kamploops. On the ground, that road is a turnoff that we don’t ‘miss’, we don’t even look for it. So an hour later we arrive at Gates Lake, the beautiful end of the wrong road we’re on. Very nice.

Many hours and stunning views later, we rock up at pit stop town Kamloops, a road and rail junction that we don’t see much of, next to an Indian restaurant that closed 5 minutes ago. There’s a supermarket nearby.

Onward the next day through Blackpool and Clear Water, to Jasper. On the way, massive snow-topped mountains. The road follows long valleys with as-far-as-the-eye-can-see pine forests. No roads off for a hundred miles except logging tracks identified by number. We wonder at the number of apparently dying trees with bedraggled or no branches. A question to ask.

Jasper is in its National Park, it seems laid-back, well-resourced and planned. We check in at its ultra-clean Downtown Hostel and make our way to the Two Brothers Totem Pole, the evening meeting point

for the first of two tours with Maligne Adventures. Not malign, but Maligne River.

A nature tour from a bus? “We can’t have twenty people wandering around looking for bears, and they'll soon be far away if we did!” says guide Chloe who says this is her dream job. So it’s like a safari. We see elks first, one or two, then a dozen with young ones, then a herd.

And then a black bear, not far from the side road we’re on. It ignores us, and moves in a line sniffing and pawing for insects. We spend half an hour following it, and leave it close to train tracks. The wildlife is this close to town, partly attracted by spillages and by rubbish left out against all the rules. But also because there's a lot of them and the forest comes close to the town. Grizzly bears come occasionally, to take baby elk they can get to, but not often.

We can get out to view a far-off beaver mound in a lake, but no beavers visible. There is an amazing reflection in the lake. And we do see a scraggy sheep sucking salt from the middle of the road. And the Loon or Loonie birds, known for their disturbing cry. A group of them is called an asylum of loonies. True. Back in the bus to the final area where there are often animals to see, and there is an enormous stag elk, next to the road and then walking past our now stationary bus. The antlers grow very fast because of a velvet skin around them that carries blood to the bone and then falls off in Spring. The things there are to learn.

The guide in another bus tips us off so that 5 minutes later: “Look, there they are!” A mother black bear with her triplet cubs, who are climbing in the trees and playfully following her. I was on the wrong side of the bus for photos but believe me it was exciting to see them, just a dozen yards away.

Our guide Chloe also explained why over 40% of the forest pines are dead. Fewer long very cold winters, and the putting out of fires, have both contributed to a great increase of Mountain Pine Beetles and their spread from its native Western Canada across to the East. Where before they were limited to a helpful eating of decaying dead pines, now they burrow into and eat live pine. Not only are so many more dead pine, but those dead pine add to the risk of huge spreading fires.

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Next morning it's a first cafe breakfast. Now that is an almond croissant. I shall learn to lay everything on thick in my baking in future. The bird approves too.

And then we’re rafting. We don’t hold back. Padded up, wet suits over swimsuits, six in a dinghy, for an hour we’re paddling as strong as we can when ordered to by the guide sat at the back. We’re the engine, the guide steers. It’s amazing, bubbling water all around, steering past rocks, many have been given names to help learn the safest paths between them.

The water is very cold, but the air is warm. Len and I are at the front for half the one-hour paddle, and then move to the back to give others a turn. It is

exactly what I wanted to experience. You couldn’t do it on your own without months of training. Exhilarating, Fear kept in check by knowing that hundreds of people do the same as we’re doing, every day. Before the end, I learn to keep the paddling in peripheral vision while looking at the scenery passing by. No wildlife but a raging river through low dense scrub. Fabulous. Like Chloe last night, our guide sings the praises of Maligne Adventures for the training and support they give new guides.

And we’re off again at about 2pm for the long drive to Revelstoke. As we leave it starts raining, and hardly stops until we arrive at 7 hours later, mostly torrential downpour. That’s shortly after the guide described how dry the climate was compared to Vancouver… throughout, We've shared the driving, an hour or two before swapping over. We've worked it really well.

Revelstoke strikes us both as a more homely liveable town than any of the others we’ve passed through. We’re in an Airbnb whose owner had recommended Paramjit’s Kitchen to eat in. We get there at 8.45pm, just before last orders and have good curries and daals. The menu is South Indian and German and Thai, with some fusion. So I

have Deep Fried Bratwurst Wontons with curry mango mustard sauce, tasty. Len comes away with three daals to thaw overnight and eat on the way tomorrow.

We take it easy in the morning, leave after 10 and visit the historic now long-unused ski jump, a beautiful walk in the forest and amazing views. You can just see me at the jump-off point, taken by Len at the top of the slope. Scary thought that someone would push off down here. Bonkers.

60km out of Revelstoke we stop for petrol and I discover I’ve left my wallet at the Airbnb. If we hadn’t enough petrol to get back to Revelstoke we would have been in big trouble. But we did. We arrive back in Vancouver at 9pm without much of a stop, but giving a lift most of the way to Tim from South London who is hiking for the summer after a wedding in Toronto. Hitching is still a thing here.

Back to the Sylvia Hotel for the next 6 nights. Before Len returns to UK work on the 24th, and I go south to Seattle, we’ve plans to go whale-searching and more nature trails, visiting Vancouver Island though it’s 5 hours away so that might not be so easy. On Saturday

there’s an international firework display, that expects to attract 300,000 people and happens to be right opposite the hotel. Len will research liveable neighbourhoods, and run, and swim. I’ll take it easy. Canada's playing in the Women's World Cup on Thursday, so that's a pub night. I’ve just had a zoom with Jeff and Barbara in Salem Oregon, where I’ll be in a month’s time. Jeff’s offered me a volunteer role at a Relay Race to the Coast hub. Why not? Bye for now.