In coming to Banff I crossed the invisible border into territory where wearing a cowboy hat is no longer an ironic statement. This may be due to the fact that I crossed into another state: I’m no longer in British Columbia, but in Alberta. Alberta lives from oil and gas, cattle, logging and tourism. I also changed timezones into ‘Mountain Time’, one closer to home from Pacific.

I share my dormitory with a corean and a japanese girl. I feel for the corean girl, since she just arrived and is looking for a job in Banff – and I think mid-september is not the best time to do that in a mountain town. I also get the sense that she made this move to be closer to her boyfriend, who works in Texas (?!!).

The japanese girl is on holiday, like me. She’s having a ‘Canada in 3 weeks’ holiday, japanese style. What’s less typical is that she travels on her own.

The lonely planet guide says about Banff that it’s almost ugly enough to make you forget about the natural beauty surrounding the place. Frankly, Banff no beauty, but it’s far from the monstrosities you get in the French Alps (like Tignes) – just a slightly kitschy and touristy village. No sign yet of the elk that are supposed to haunt the place like holy cows.

The first morning I climb a real, honest-to-god mountain, Sulphur Mountain, 5.5km of zig-zag along a mountain flank. It takes me about 2 hours – I’m sweaty and winded by the time I’m up there, so I decide to take my lunch, and am joined there by groups of chinese tourists and middle-aged people who took the gondola (cable car), and who say things like “do you think they’ll let me eat ice cream on the gondola ?”

It’s 3o’clock when i get back down, and I’m a bit tired so I wander around a little bit, and almost stumble into a thicket when I hear the cries of the famed elk. They don’t sound cuddly at all, rather more like the monster pits in Star Wars – probably mating season. So I decide to turn back (also there’s a bit of swamp in the way).

The nature here is mind-blowing. The mountains are jagged monsters, and you see why they are called Rockies – ‘rocky’ is the first adjective that comes to mind. The water is an almost unnatural aquamarine blue or crystal pure (and then it mirrors the surrounding mountains), and the fall colours, yellow and red are starting to appear – the kind of views that make you go mute.

It also makes you wonder what it is like to play baseball, party or generally live surrounded by these enormous rocks.

Since I’ve more or less scoped out the Banff I can get to without a car, I decide to book myself into a tour for the next day, and choose the ‘Glacier Trail’ by a small touring company. Then I go and have dinner with my japanese roommate, Mayu, a law student, who candidly tells me she likes to drink A Lot with her friends to relieve the pressure of her studies, that she’s a ‘shopping freak’, and basically smokes every chance she gets. Ow-kay. Fun company though.

The tour, the next day, is an excellent surprise. We go from wonder to wonder, Lake Louise, Bow Lake and Glacier, and we actually get to walk on the Athabasca glaciers, Pito Lake and glacier. I take more pictures today than on any other day of the trip. Nuggets from the tour:

• the rockies were formed between 140 and 65 billion years ago. They are basically sedimented rock (pressurized by the tons of oceans), on the crack between two tectonic plates. These pushed up against each other – the pushed down bit is the Front Range, where Banff is situated, and the sedimented layers are vertical here. The pushed up bit is the Main Range, and that’s where Jasper is – higher mountains and the layers are horizontal, forming strata on top of the mountain.
• Then 4 ice ages ground down and shaped the rockies to about half of their original height. The rock is rather soft (limestone – 3 on the scale of Mohr – dolomite – 4 Mohr), so it’s sculpted by ice and water to the mad sharp shapes we see nowadays.
• glaciers are overflows from enormous, mountain-top ice fields. Ice fields are pressurized snow (it takes 100ft of snow to have enough pressure). The ice at the bottom of ice fields and glaciers is under such pressure that it behaves semi-liquidly, and actually flows. The ice at the top, however, is not, and bubbles and cracks, which makes it fairly dangerous to walk on
• the touring companies use Terra Buses, buses with 6 wheels of about 2m diameter and 6-wheel drives. Impressive machines, with a maximum speed of 18km/h, but basically glacier-proof.
• The water is such a light blue because of ‘rock flour’, rocks that have been ground to dust which is suspended into the water that flows down from the glaciers
• the water from the Athabasca glacier tasted incredibly pure (with a hint of earth)
• the glaciers and icefields are the main form of water storage in the region, and they are shrinking …

I meet a nice elderly couple, the man is Belgian, but immigrated 58 years ago. He has grandchildren in Banff. And still he visits his Belgian family, comes to Belgium to vote, and watches the Belgian news on TV5 every day (his Ontario wife tells me with an eye roll).

So, another night in Banff, and last day tomorrow. The weather has been perfect so far, seems to be turning a little bit cloudy, but I’m sure I’ll find something to do. Tomorrow night overnight bus back to Vancouver.

flickr photo set

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