Our last hiking day in Jasper National Park will be a memorable one and it also reinforces how fortunate we've been this past week, or so, in having clear air - today the smoke is back!
The Tonquin Valley Trail is a loop and yesterday we began at the northeastern trailhead, at Marmot Basin, to hike the Maccarib Creek portion of the trail, or at least a portion of it. Today we headed to the other end of the loop, the Astoria River portion that begins off the Cavell Road on the way to Cavell Meadows. Here's the trailhead with Mount Edith Cavell is the smoky distance.
Just a short distance down the trail it crosses the outlet stream of Cavell Lake before beginning a long, gradual descent through the forest along Mount Edith Cavell's north slope.
We had made a good start on our day hike, going about 2 1/4 miles (3.5+ km) when Frederick suddenly stopped, told me to, "stop, bears," and said get out the camera. by the time I raised the camera, which I wear strapped to my chest, to take a picture, mamma grizzly was ushering her cub off the trail into the trees.
We moved over to the side of the trail, I got out my bear spray but didn't remove the orange guard, and we could see that the bears were moving back towards the trail. We withdrew a few feet and I took another picture.
This is a cropped and enlarged picture of the one above, we weren't that close. If you click on it you might be able to see the cub over the left ear of mama bear.
As mama and baby began to continue along the trail, we quietly and calmly began to withdraw up the trail - but we didn't run - to put some distance between us and the bears.
Again, this is a cropped and enlarged picture of the one above. We went about 300 feet and encountered two hikers that we had passed at the very start of the trail. We warned them of the bears, we turned around and all four of us could see the bears calmly continuing to move along the trail towards us. We turned and hiked with a purpose back towards the trailhead.
We encountered several more hikers on our way back and everyone gathered a the outlet bridge to discuss what to do. Most of the hikers had planned to spend the night at a campground further along the loop trail; many of them were talking about going to the other end of the loop trail and hiking in, the same trail we did yesterday. Frederick and I continued on to the car and we were just preparing to drive away and report the bear sighting when the group came to their cars because the mamma grizzly and her cub had reached the bridge. We left and reported to the Cavell Road check-point our experience. It was quite an experience!
Today's hike:
Length - 4.38 miles (7.16 km)
Duration - 1 hour, 44 minutesElevation gain - 360 feet (103 meters)
Wonder how many steps they got in. Glad you're safe. Thanks for that eagle eye, Fred!
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