I started my first day in Banff by setting off on foot from the hostel. The glorious weather of the drive south was but a memory as steady drizzle fell the whole day. I walked down the mountain through the forest to Bow River and got some shots on video that could almost be out of "Into The Wild" itself (were "Into The Wild" shot on a really shaky handycam). Alas, still no bears.
The next day I jumped in the car and headed to Lake Louise and Lake Moraine, both highly recommended by all parties. In fact, Shelley and "John" had shown me a couple of photos a few days before that were enticing to say the least. Clouds had been loitering at my dorm window when I arose, and they stayed put as I got myself ready. As I ventured out, the skies were positively catastrophic. It was almost as if a great forest fire were burning nearby, and all the smoke was gathering in and around Banff. Thick fingers of rainclouds choked the necks of the mountains and sidled through the trees.
Lake Louise lies just off Hwy 1 - the Trans-Canada - from Banff. Upon that highway, regular during the summer, takes place a phenomenon known as a 'bear jam', whereby traffic grinds to a halt as those-with-the-cameras disembark and rush to stick their lenses into the faces of any unwitting bears. I thought I had encountered one in the driving rain, but no, merely a simple human who had plunged their car nose-first into a ditch in the atrocious conditions. I put my camera down, placed my hands back on the steering wheel and turned my attention back to the road.[Sorry]
The lakes met the expectations set by the rest of the region. However, the weather inevitably detracted from the view, so I resolved to swing by again on the Saturday, when I would be driving past on my way back to Jasper (and my reacquaintance with the train).
Heading back to Banff, the conditions were appalling. Sheets of rain hammered down and water began to pool up on the 2-lane highway. I - sensibly I thought - used the cruise control so I could keep my foot hovered over the brake. Nearing Banff, the gathering water became more frequent until one puddle caused my side of the car to aquaplane. The cars' reaction was swift and decisive: cruise control off, traction control on, everybody safe. I'm going to miss him when we go our separate ways.
Saturday, and the drive back to Jasper, and clear skies again. Perfect timing. Stopping off at Lake Louise I decided to do a little hike to a spot called 'Plain of the Six Glaciers'. Surprisingly enough, it's a place - a plain - where six glaciers converge, and feed the waters of the lake below. It was about a three-hour round trip and, despite the final stretch of track being closed for safety reasons, the views were still amazing. One part is named the 'Death Trap', a cliff-lined passage which passes directly below the lip of a glacier 100ft above. The area was one of the first set-up for mountain tourism in Canada (around the end of the Victorian era - Louise was Queen Victoria's fourth child), so there is a log cabin teahouse up in the plain ("we can't export the mountains, so we'll import the tourists").
Lastly, I should shed some light on the title of this post...
Many of you will know I intended to go to Fiji and stay with a tribe on a desert island over Christmas, visiting New Zealand before and finishing the sabbatical with a US road trip. Unfortunately, local landowner politics mean the tribe is unable to welcome guests right now, so i won't be living on a Fijian beach in December. Much of my last couple of weeks has therefore been given over to deciding what i should do: could I defer some sabbatical, or go elsewhere in Fiji, or extend my time in other locations?
Here is what I have decided:
I'll be going to the States straight from Canada, road-tripping between mid-October and about the 10th January, starting and ending in LA. I know one or two of you were toying with meeting up in the US over winter, so my apologies if my change of plans scuppers that. (You can, of course, swing by in the next three months. I'm thinking I'll do a clockwise lap starting and ending in LA, but will have my own wheels so can feasibly be anywhere at anytime.)
I'll then head to New Zealand for five or six weeks, before closing the sabbatical with a different local community on a different sustainable/no-impact living project on a different beach: John Obey, about 20 miles south of Freetown. In Sierra Leone...
Here's the best of the pics I managed with my phone in the Rockies:
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