In which Moominmama turns back to avoid bears but gets more wildlife photos than ever before...
One of the striking things about arriving in Kananaskis Country is all the bear warnings. Every provincial park bathroom door, trailhead and many roadside placards warn that you're in bear country.
The bear photographed above was nothing to worry about! It is located outside the Canmore Public Library but very much an emblem of the region!
Real bears, grizzlies and black bears, are not hard to find here, drawn to the highway verges, trailsides and sunny mountain fields where the buffaloberries grow. (Moominmama snapped this grizzly from the safety of her car.)
Moominmama learned about these berries in Alaska where they're called soap berries because, besides being tart, they taste soapy. Moominmama can personally vouch for this!
But the bears love them and come down from higher ground as the berries ripen, then follow the harvest up the mountains as the berries ripen at higher elevation.
This has been a good year in Kananaskis for buffaloberries thanks to abundant early rainfall. That has increased the bear-human interactions such that provincial park trails and picnic areas are regularly closed by park officials when bears are seen hanging around.
It also means hikers need to be wary on trails that remained open. Moominmama started up one trail only to see the rear end of a bear heading off into the brush. After waiting to give the bear plenty of time to exit, I made lots of noise and continued up the trail cautiously -- only to scare a cub who stared at me for a moment before running off.
Unsure about where Mama Bear was, Moominmama deemed it wise to abandon that hike and return to her car. Based on Alltrails reviews, this is not an unfrequent occurrence in Kananaskis parks! There's also piles of bear scat on many of the trails to remind you of their presence even if you don't see one.
But any inconvenience due to bears has been more than made up for with other wildlife sightings. Take this moose, for example. Like the bighorn sheep, the moose seem to find some helpful minerals in the middle of the roads here. One drives carefully.
There are also plentiful birds, including the ptarmigans and grouse. Moominmama came across some baby grouse on a trail and then realized the mama bird was cooing to them from the brush.
By crouching down and waiting, I got to watch Mama come out of the bushes to chase down her recalcitrant young -- and I got close enough to get a decent photo!
I believe the birds were spruce grouse, but they could be ptarmigan, also common here.
Given I use only an iPhone and have no telephoto lens, I am terribly pleased when I can capture wildlife, and Kananskis has been an amazing in this regard.
It's also been lovely because this region is so much less crowded than the national parks nearby.
Moominmama did a hike up to the Kananaskis fire tower from one of the campgrounds and met no other hikers on the way up or down. (Saw bear scat but no bears.) She did meet a park service fire watcher, John, who let me up onto the tower above his home to snap this picture of Upper and Lower Kananaskis lakes.
Moominmama was a bit nervous the next day when she set out solo on a hike to Lake Rummel, but she ended up meeting a large contingent of hikers from Calgary -- the M'n'M club (Mondays in the Mountains). I passed one group and traveled on alone for a while until I came up on a second chain of hikers. This group was traveling at just the right pace for me.
They invited me to join and made me an honorary M'n'M member for the day! I didn't have to worry about being on my own among the bears! Here are my new chums. They tell me you can find a hiking club in Calgary for every day of the week.
Traveling in Canada, I do get lots of questions about U.S. politics. When I sat with my new hiking friends over our picnic lunches, we talked about the trade war, political polarization and the upcoming midterm election in the U.S.
In many instances, people try to size me up when they learn I'm American, and they ask: you're not a Trump supporter are you? All is well once they are reassured that I'm not.
I end here with my favorite photo of this week. The Canadian Rockies have been the high point of my journeys for several years now, and this year has been no exception! This is Lake Rummel, a lake left behind in a glacial cirque like so many around here. But somehow the colors and the reflection came together in a way that I absolutely love. Hope you do too.
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