Lazy start today, but thanks to being woken at 5am by a phone call, I’m still feeling the effects of jetlag. I think the dry and somewhat smoky air is also affecting my sleep as I’m waking up with headaches and a really bunged up nose. Lovely things to read about in a blog…
After plenty of toast and tea, we are off to see Elbow Falls today. This is a waterfall on one of the two rivers that passes through Calgary. It’s upstream from the city in a park and we are taking a picnic. Julia doesn’t walk so far so we spoke about going for a walk on our own and Graham said there were plenty of paths to choose from.
Driving everywhere in Calgary I didn’t think much of the distance we were going until we were very much outside the city limits and starting to weave our way into the hills. We were not just going to a park, this was proper forest wilderness. A “Park” to a Canadian is not just somewhere with swings and a bench next to a housing estate, it’s a huge area of forest with a few 2 or 3 thousand meter peaks in it.
I was definitely not dressed for a hike with my thick well fitted t shirt and jean shorts. I had imagined something like Hyde Park, maybe with an ice cream stand and comically green grass where we could lay out our 1950’s picnic and overlook the city… but oh well, you’d better show us how to use the bear spray.
We first stopped at a picnic site next to the river and enjoyed the sun. I used the whoop to razz around the trees and get an aerial view. The river is really wide and shallow here but you can see just how much it rises when the snow melts. Bank to bank it must have been 200m wide with berms of river stones forcing the water to snake it’s way down stream.
After some sausage sandwiches, left over from last night, we head further into the wild to Elbow Falls. This impressive waterfall is located at a turn in the river and must drop 6-8m. It seems that a huge chunk of bedrock sticks out and forces the water to go around one side of it before tumbling into a wide crack. It’s like a plughole sucking the foamy water down next to this bedrock cliff.
Over time it looks like a cave has been hollowed out into the rockface beyond the falls. Its dry now and full of logs so I guess it only gets filled by swirling melt water in spring.
I popped on the FPV goggles and had another razz around. Diving up and down the cliffs and chasing the water over the cliff. The spray got the whoop a little wet but it survived. Only at the end of the battery did it nearly end up in the water when it sagged under throttle.
At this point Julia and Graham left us for an hour so we could have a bit of a walk. There are indeed paths going off in all directions, but they are all day mountain hikes, not tours of a well manicured lawn playpark. We wouldn’t be reaching a summit, but we walked up a hill for 40 mins to a clearing where we got a good view of the mountains. Well, a better view. There was still smog in the air from the wild fires, but a smattering of rain had cleared it out a bit for us.
We spent some time just enjoying the view and taking some photos of what I’m sure we will consider small hills, after we get to the Rocky mountains proper. I was lucky enough to spot a chipmunk on the descent too. Half the size of a squirrel and much prettier with its black stripes, he was just mooching around in the leaves, completely unfazed by us.
