One of the longer and more strenuous day trips near Banff leads up the western flank of Cascade Mountain to a large natural amphitheater. This hanging valley, enclosed by the limestone cliffs of the mountain's summit ridges, features lush subalpine wildflower meadows and immense rock-slides inhabited by marmots and pikas. A relentless series of switch-backs transport you upwards through a dense forest of spruce and lodgepole pine for 2 miles to the cool, subalpine forest at the mouth of the amphitheater.
Having hauled ourselves up the switch-backs, we reached the forest at...
the beginning of the amphitheater.
We continued through the amphitheater (notice the folded strata) until we reached the headwall and...
found our lunch spot. This is looking south, back down the valley.
A series of three pictures - Frederick at our lunch spot seated amongst the flowers.
Next to the lunch spot, and the flowers, was a small brook flowing through the moist meadows.
There's Frederick (enlarge the picture), seated on our lunch rock, amidst the flowers next to the brook flowing through the meadow.
Even mountain thistles are beautiful.
Close-up of the flowers growing in the rocks next to our lunch spot.
This is another series of three pictures - during lunch we were amused by...
a pika who was...
eating its lunch.
Back down through the meadow.
A look back at the head-wall and...
Rockslides along the side walls.
Banff is down there, somewhere.
As we were leaving the trail parking lot, which is at the Mount Norquay ski area, there was a small group of female Dall sheep with...
three babies.
Todays hike:
Length 9.55 miles
Duration - 5 hours, 15 minutes
Elevation gain - 3,174 feet (about 317 floors on a Fitbit)
No comments:
Post a Comment