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

We spent An’s last day in Vancouver seeing some sights, going up the tower (worth it), walking around in Kitsilano and Granville Island. The night before she left we went and splashed out on a top-end sushi meal (Tojo’s) – well worth it, only delicate touch of western influences in a fine japanese meal.

The next day we parted midday, she went to the airport, and I took the Greyhound bus to Kelowna. Kelowna is in the middle of Okanagan Valley, and I had a confused notion of checking the place out, and to take the time to think of what to do next.

From fertile hinterland, the mountains approached from either side until they surrounded the road – green and sharp, with the highway following a little stream. Then the green faded and the mountainous landscape became drier, covered in yellow grass. Then we descended into Okanagan valley itself, with a view on the lake – I didn’t see many vineyards, but maybe they tend to avoid the highway.

The bus dropped me off at a mall, and I had to laugh – this was a typical Mallrats scene, with fluo-clad teenagers lounging around waiting for the bus after a hard day of skateboarding and other activities around the mall. Sometimes we forget that those films, that seem exotic to us, are based in daily fact.

After breakfast the next day, I shopped for lunch and went on one of the advertised hikes: Knox Mountain. Knox Mountain is probably a hill, since I climbed it in about an hour. The feel of the place is distinctly mediterranean, dried vegetation, pines, crickets, the aromatic smells. The path: dry and gravelly, reminding me of short hikes we took into the Pyrenees.

I wasn’t alone, as Knox Mountain obviously was some kind of city park, with power walkers and bikers taking a go at the steep slopes. After going back down, I settled myself in a spot in the shade to have lunch at the waterfront.

This holiday is a bit of a mosaic of holidays. Provincial and charming Victoria, the intense hike at the West Coast Trail, city trip in Vancouver, and now I felt like being on a lakeside resort, Lake Garda American version.

I criss-crossed the town, finding it a bit boring in the drowsy afternoon sun. I scoped out the local supermarket in great detail, as any traveller knows is fun to do. I did laundry. I found the local beach after wandering in another direction, and sat there for a while. Then I went back to the hotel and hoped that it was early enough to be bedtime already.

In short, I felt grumpy and antisociable, which I indulge in when I’m alone, since nobody gets hurts, or cares. The SameSun environment didn’t help – I resolve to try to avoid them – with the loud music blaring at any hour of the day, the jaded 22-year old partying around the world, the happy-hippie colours and the eye-bleedingly bad murals.

After much agonizing over my lonely planet guide, I decided to go to Banff, for simple reasons of time and budget – in a future holiday I’d like to visit the Queen Charlotte Islands, and take the boat up to Alaska, but that was simply undoable in a week.

This morning found me in a better mood already, on a bus to Banff. 8 hours of bus, but i didn’t mind: I’m now surrounded by postcard mountains and pine smell, so I think I’ve made the right choice. More later.

The West Coast Trail is a hike along the pacific coast of Vancouver Island. It was originally a First Nations trail, used by local tribes. In the 20th century a few heavy shipwrecks due to the awful weather earned that coast the sweet nickname of ‘Graveyard of the Pacific’. The Canadian government was forced to act and made couple of lighthouses along the trail, as well as making the trail more accessible, with regular checkpoint, so that supplies could be carried to, and victims away from, the shipwreck sites.

These days the trail is mostly used as a hiking trail, situated in a natural reserve, the Pacific Rim National Park. An, my long-time friend, and I, decided to attempt it together, in a dash of impulsive madness. Unfortunately, we were a tad late in the booking, and we were forced to start from the south end, at Pachena bay, reportedly the most difficult part.

Terminology: Tkm stands for Trail kilometers. I use this unit because there is absolutely no way these correspond to actual metric kilometers. I was tempted to use Fkm, but let’s try for calm and objective.

Day 1 – Port Renfrew to Thrasher’s Cove – 5Tkm
The delightfully antique bus drops us off at Port Renfrew. The first stop is Trail registration,and an introductory session. We receive a map of the trail, and some explanation: due to the weather, the trail changes every year, so information is vital (don’t use this cable car, fill up with water here …). The instructor also tells us about wildlife in the region, and how to act when meeting a cougar or a bear. The map also contains indications about the tide: some parts of the beach are impassable when the sea is too high.

OK, we’re off. The ferry, driven by Butch, a first nations guy, brings us to the trail head, where we meet the people who just finished the trail, who look dirty but happy.

And then, we suffer. The trail consists of climbing over gigantic roots, sliding along rock faces, slipping down muddy hills, and creeping over tree trunks spanned over small water streams or other swampy situations. Obviously, we’re in way over our heads. The backpack takes some getting used to: it makes for a totally different kind of walking. We tell ourselves today is the worst day. Several times.

Fortunately, we’re lucky with the weather, and we have sun filtering through the lush forest all day. The forest itself is amazing. Trees are massive, moss is everywhere, strands of lichen. The vegetation is very dog eat dog, and it’s about who grows on top of whom.

We arrive at Thrasher’s Cove at about 5o’clock, utterly exhausted and sporting our first bruises. Thrasher’s cove is a nice surprise: the sun’s still out, and we find a camping spot above the tide line, amongst the tree trunk. Tent and bed stuff out, we cook our stuff and eat it like animals, even though it’s pretty foul (avoid the Jamaican rice with chicken in dried form), and then we join a small group of people around a camp fire.
» Read more: West Coast Trail