Banff National Park

I said goodbye to the hot springs, and started up into the Canadian Rockies. The road up from Radium was a nice drive, quite a bit uphill, as you’d imagine.

  

Along the way, I pulled off to hike back into the Paint Pots. This is an area where ochre pigment occurs naturally. Native peoples used it for body paint and stain for goods. Then, the area was briefly mined around a century ago and the pigment was used to make paint. The trail is still mostly packed snow, but the day is warm, a sweatshirt is plenty. Looks like I get to try out my brandy-new hiking boots!

 

Across the river, there’s this amazing foot bridge, obviously newly constructed. I snap some pix of the river from the top of the arch.

        

The trail starts to get muddy, and then, all around me is this orange landscape. These are the ochre beds, where the runoff from the pots above flows and pools .

     

Further up the trail, the color deepens…

  

At last, I come to the source, the paint pots themselves. These are actually iron rich springs that slowly bring up and deposit the ochre all over the landscape. Pretty cool!

        

Well, my boots aren’t new anymore! That’s actually a good thing: nothing looks more lame on the trail than a pair of shiny new hiking boots! Ha! When I return to the parking area, it looks like my RV made a new friend while I was gone!

  

Banff is a typical tourist town (trap?), the kind that grows up to service the summer visitors to the parks. It’s quaint in a 21st century kind of way, but is primarily shops, eateries, and tour places. Reminds me of Skagway. It is set in a beautiful place, with mountains all around.

     

There’s like a dozen different campgrounds in the area, but the only one that’s open this early is the Tunnel Mountain trailer village, the same place where Dennis and Carol stayed a few weeks ago. When they were here, the place was full of elk, now, it’s full of RVs! There’s elk poop everywhere, but the herd seems to have moved on. It’s a huge place, many hundred sites, but isn’t my style, I like my campgrounds more rustic and remote, this is like street parking. Each site has about 20 sq. ft. of picnic table and fire ring, and that’s about it. Good for a one-night stand, but I’ll move on tomorrow.

  

I’ll swing by the visitor center tomorrow and make sure the road to Jasper is open. For now, I think I’ll take a walk around the park, then call it a night.