by Brian Patton | Sep 19, 2021 | backpacking, Banff National Park, Home page News
More and more backpackers are exploring Banff National Park’s Front Ranges every year. Mostly they enter the region on the Red Deer River, either from the headwaters at Red Deer Lakes or from the park’s eastern boundary at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch. But...
by Brian Patton | Feb 27, 2021 | backpacking, Home page News, Kootenay National Park
Sometimes moving through landscape can become art. In the mid-1970s, David (aka Dale) Zieroth was working as a park naturalist in Kootenay National Park when he hiked on an overnight to Floe Lake with some of his Parks Canada colleagues. The poem that came out of that...
by Brian Patton | Nov 22, 2020 | backpacking, Home page News
Jim Thorsell began charting a route for the Great Divide Trail while completing a trail use survey for Banff and Yoho Parks in 1967. After tweaking the original route, he published the Provisional Trail Guide and Map for the Proposed Great Divide Trail in 1970. The...
by Brian Patton | Sep 30, 2020 | backpacking, Banff National Park, Home page News
We’ve all had times when the best laid and ambitious plans have to be abandoned. That was the case this August when avid backpacker and faithful blog contributor Gavin Fitch set off from Ya Ha Tinda Ranch with three friends. Despite the problems they...
by Brian Patton | Sep 6, 2020 | backpacking, Banff National Park, Home page News
We’ve had quite a bit of interest in the Castleguard Meadows over the past few years. Several contributors have provided descriptions of this overgrown, difficult 35-km route. In May, Christian Gilroy sent another account of a 5-day in-and-out trip that he...
by Brian Patton | Aug 31, 2020 | backpacking, canadian rockies trail guide, Home page News, Kootenay National Park
Kootenay National Park is celebrating its centennial with a “Kootenay Then and Now: Recreate the Photo” contest. Since we began our fieldwork on the Mountain Parks’ first comprehensive trail guide 50 years ago, I thought it would be appropriate to...
