Week Fourteen – Spray Lake, 2015

It’s hard to believe we only have four more weeks up here.  We’ll be heading back to Castlegar after the 15^th of September, then on down to Abbotsford, then Spokane, Boise, and on to the south.  It’s a tough life to lead but someone has to do it…ha, ha.

Someone built an Inuksuk out on the dam.  It seems to be the thing to do around here.  The hiking trails all have stacked rocks somewhere along the way and I can even see a cairn or rocks on top of the big sister.  I guess it’s a way for people to say “I was here” and leave their mark.  Anyway, it’s kind of fun to see them…and sometimes build them.

This week a car pulled into the overflow parking area in the middle of the day…unusual unless they were going to try to picnic which isn’t allowed in the campground.  I walked over to see what they wanted and talked with the fellow for a few minutes.  He said they were looking for the “spiritual vortex” which is supposed to be somewhere in the campground.  (I should have known when he got out of the car with his red shirt, purple skirt and hiking boots…hmmmm!)  I asked him to describe the location and he described the trailhead perfectly so I sent him up that way.  There is a place where the trail opens up into a large rocky area that is quite pretty.  People have built Inuksuks and stacked rocks and built cairns all over the place there so I assume that’s what he was looking for.  I’ve been up there and have never felt the “vibrations” or any kind of spiritual sensations that are supposed to accompany a vortex.   To tell you the truth this whole place could be called a vortex because its tremendous beauty really does put you in awe of mother earth.

Another bird caught in the camera lens…this one is some kind of hawk flying low over the meadows near the lake where the ground squirrels live. 

Some fellows stopped at the trailhead across the lake the other morning.  I was out walking Oso and watched them doing something but couldn’t figure out what it was.  Then I heard the buzzing sound!  They had some of those remote control helicopters and were flying them around the mountainside.  These ones seemed to be quite fancy…I’ve seen the inexpensive ones sold at malls and even they are kind of impressive.  They have a tiny camera in them and will shoot photos of whatever they hover over.  Seems like a good hobby for some folks who are interested in that.

The real helicopters fly over here quite often too.  They are sight-seeing flights that take people either from Canmore or the Casino on Hwy 1 over the mountains or to Mt. Assiniboine.  There is a lodge at Mt. Assiniboine and many people fly in and hike out…some even fly up there and have their wedding or some other kind of celebration.  I’d love to take a sight-seeing flight over the mountains on a sunny day like today…maybe one day we’ll treat ourselves to it.  You can almost see someone looking out the back window in this picture.  When the floods happened in 2012, they had to fly all of the campers out of here in helicopters because the roads were blocked with slides.  All of the tour companies helped out and even the armed forces brought helicopters.  They took people, pets and one bag each…until that is one of the dogs pooped in the army helicopter…they the army wouldn’t take dogs any longer so the tour companies had to take them.  What wimps!

We went for a walk the other morning down toward Goat Pond where one of the trail crews is building bridges over swampy areas as part of the Trans Canada Trail that is going through here.  The fellow said he is having helicopters come in tomorrow morning to fly the bases he is building and some of the really heavy logs into their locations.  We have another trail crew camping here.  They are working on a section of the trail south of us on the other side of the lake.  They work 12 hour days moving rocks, cutting through brush and trees and building bridges too.  They come home, have something to eat and crash then head out again the next morning.

A young couple stopped by a few minutes ago to leave emergency contact information with us.  They are going to climb Old Goat Mountain and traverse the ridge down the lake to Mt. Nestor.  They said if their car is still there in the mornings to send out the troops.  So many hikers enjoy the mountain trails around here but sometimes we hear Search and Rescue on the radio coordinating searches for people who don’t make it back.  I’m sure these kids will be fine…they had the proper gear and emergency supplies with them and were smart enough to leave contact info just in case.

I’ll leave you with a beautiful picture of the day today.  A bank of clouds hung over the lake until just a little while ago and now it is clear, warm and sunny… a perfect day at Spray Lake! 

…oh, but there’s more…

Well, a lot can happen in a day…that young couple that stopped by to give me info about their hike didn’t come back on time.  They expected to be down the mountain by 8:00 p.m., 10:00 at the latest but the next morning their cars were still there.   He had written on the emergency contact info he gave me to call for help if they were not back by morning so I did.  Better safe than sorry!  Within an hour RCMP and Conservation Officers arrived.  Helicopters had been dispatched and the search was on.  They set up an emergency command center in the overflow parking lot near us.  It was really interesting to watch them work.  Later they called in search dogs and had ATV’s brought in so they could search down paths and roadways not accessible by truck.  By noon the hikers were still not back and I can tell you we were all pretty worried about them.  My powers of observation were tested when they asked me what they had been wearing (to see them better from the helicopter but also to judge their experience as hikers).  I told them the guy was wearing a rusty brown shirt and blue jeans and the girl was in light colours.  The search continued until about 4:30 in the afternoon when the hikers walked out of the bush on their own.  A cheer went up from all of the searchers and RCMP when they heard the news!  The hikers had gotten stuck (cliffed out) somewhere on the top of the mountain, stayed the night, had to backtrack quite a ways and then came down through the bush.  They were exhausted, hungry and thankful to be back safely…we were very happy to see them!  Oh, and my powers of observation…completely backwards…she was wearing a brown shirt with jeans and he was wearing light grey.  Oh well, I sort of got it right.

It’s a really good thing those kids made it down that day because the next was pretty ugly.  We had a huge rainstorm that lasted most of the day turning into snow by noon.  The snow didn’t stay very long but was kind of pretty while it lasted.  The rain stayed all day and into the evening.  Even with the weather being ridiculously cold and wet, we were almost full last night.

This poor little Indian paintbrush braved the snow…the last blossoms of summer!

Yesterday was snow and rain with temperatures below 0 centigrade…today is nice and sunny and supposed to get up to 19 degrees centigrade.  This is definitely Alberta weather!

I took Oso for a walk this morning and guess what I found…a nice little crop of raspberries.  They were a good size for wild berries and were sweet and juicy.  Now I know why the bears like them so much!

This is a bit longer blog than normal but it seems there was a lot happening in the last few days.  Hope you found it interesting!

Here’s a peek at Windtower with fresh snow…beautiful mountain!