works of wanderlust

Category: local adventure

  • The Mystery of Big Island (Part One)

    I had other writing plans this morning, but a mystery has been unravelling in my own backyard that has piqued and diverted my interest for an upcoming summer of potential exploration.

    Backstory.

    I live near the mighty North Saskatchewan River, a twelve hundred and eighty-seven kilometer long ribbon of glacial water that flows, stretches and merges with it’s sister as it’s waters drip off the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains and eventually drain in the Hudson’s Bay.

    I can walk a mere thirty minutes from my house and dip my feet in it’s brown hued muddy waters and I often do…. though the wet-feet part is not always on purpose.

    I took this photo from a footbridge suspended under a highway river crossing. The city’s ring road cuts across the river twice, and this bridge located in the southwest is one of those spots. The bridge also marks an interesting point in the city’s remarkable river valley parks system: the south-side edge of where it is uniformly accessible. Behind me in this shot is a network of maintained asphalt trails, benches, waste bins, signage, and friendly fellow residents enjoying the the park system.

    Ahead of me, in the trees pictured, the trails look more like this second photo:

    Much of this is a mix of crown land and private property, often merging and tripping over each other in unclear boundaries. I’ve walked and run through there a few times.

    It’s as close to local bushwhacking adventure as I can get on foot and still be home for lunch.

    Big Island.

    Go back to look at that first photo.

    The wedge of trees that seems to slice across the river (where the river actually bends South a bit) is a piece of land that is called Big Island and apparently has something of a local history. You can also read more about it at citymuseumedmonton.ca.

    The green arrow highlights the view of the photo from the bridge I had referenced earlier.

    I fully admit, I’ve been curious about these parts, and have wandered through the woods with my cameras (particularly through those trails on either side of the arrow I’ve drawn on the map) looking for something interesting.

    However, renewed local chatter in the last few days that our provincial government may be working to designate Big Island as a protected provincial recreation area has me digging deeper into this mystery: the Mystery of Big Island (and why after fifteen years living so close I have never gone to check it out!)

    I think I might officially have a summer exploration project. Visit. Take some photos. Learn more about this amazing local treasure that has been hiding right under my nose.

    Stay tuned!

  • Local Adventures: Social Distancing at Spray Lakes

    International travel is still something that hasn’t quite come back to normal, but fortunately we happen to live in a province of Canada that has it’s share of tourist destinations.

    We’re spending some more there time over spring break returning to the spot where we took our first local pandemic weekend getaway back in July of 2020.

    We had gone for a drive.

    Kananaskis Provincial Park is a sprawling mountain nature preserve on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, touching the foothills and playing peekaboo with the city of Calgary just a few twists of the highway away.

    There are thousands of kilometers of hiking trails wending their way through bear country and hundreds of lakes, rivers, streams, waterfalls and spectacular mountain scenes speckle the landscape.

    You can see a respectable sampling of it by driving for a bit, then hiking for a while, then driving some more. Our ultimate goal was to drive the full loop around the hundred and fifty kilometers (give or take) back to our hotel. The route led past a number of stops, from a trailhead for a full morning strenuous hike to a couple spots where we could step out of the car for a few photos and snack at a nearby picnic table.

    Sparrowhawk Day Use Area fell into the latter category.

    A small ten-car parking lot was virtually empty as we pulled off the gravel road. A five minute wander down to the shores of the Spray Lake Reservoir led us passing by an eerily quiet assortment of empty picnic tables and cold campfire pits. On a summer day like this in any other year there would have been cars lined up along the road for lack of parking, and dozens of motor-less recreational boats exploring the lake. The din of families enjoying this place would have hidden the absolute stillness with which we were instead greeted.

    We walked along the shore for a while The kid skipped some stones into the still water. A canoe, far across the water, almost tracing the distant shore, was the only human movement besides us.

    I took some photos of the lake, and this one too, looking North towards where the dam sits, up past the bend and at the foot of those faraway mountains. The water almost like glass in the late morning calm.

    The ultimate in socially distanced places where no one else seemed to even exist.

  • March Melt in the River Valley

    So desperately am I looking forward to two things: being able to travel further than my neighbourhood and the now-six-month-old puppy being able to tackle a long hike.

    Adventure journal.

    The spring is being generous to us this year.

    Last year (and I remember this specifically because it was the first couple weeks of local lockdown and I was keenly aware of the weather and the time I spent outside because of being stuck at home) we had a slow, wet March melt.

    The snow lingered. The ice slipped up the sidewalks. Regular dustings of snow teased a late spring.

    And I didn’t yet have a six month old puppy who needed long daily walks.

    I live in a city of almost a million people, but I doubt more than ten thousand of them delve very deep at all into our local wilderness.

    The local municipal government made some smart decisions a number of years back and created a kind of zoning exclusion to private development along the river. There are some houses and properties grandfathered in, but for nearly fifty kilometers of river it is managed wilderness, threaded with asphalt paths, single track trails, foot bridges, parking access, picnic areas, and boat launches. The single connected system has been calculated to be twenty-two times the size of Central Park in New York City.

    And we live a ten minute walk from any of about six nearby access points.

    I Took the Afternoon Off.

    The dog needed a long walk as much as I did.

    We slipped into one of the lesser known river valley access points, the kind where you step onto a gravel trail between some houses tucked into the back corner of the neighbourhood, then your take the left fork away from the main trail and out into what seems to be a small strip of unused agricultural land, follow a narrow single track trail into the trees and then wander your way down a moderate descent to the main asphalt path.

    I’ve walked (or run) it a hundred times.

    It was new territory for the pup.

    And I was being cautious, of course.

    The pup is still not fully grown, and she’ll always be somewhat small. Evidence of coyote scat leftover from the winter was all over the place. I’ve seen the wild hounds out there a few times, too. She wouldn’t make much more than a snack for one of them, though they’d be fighting me tooth and nail to get ahold of her. Fortunately they didn’t seem to be lurking nearby and are generally timid critters. We’re going to have an encounter eventually, though. It’s their habitat and I built my house on it. But it doesn’t mean we don’t keep a couple pairs of eyes and ears on alert even when we’re enjoying our walk.

    The ground was squishy and the air was fresh.

    As I said he March melt has been particularly generous to us this year. The temperatures were in the mid-teens and the wispy clouds let enough sunshine through to make the day more than enjoyable, particularly after that long, long winter.

    But mounds of unmelted snow still huddled in the shady bits.

    And the ground was soft and soggy where drainage was less cooperative.

    The mud caked on my pant cuffs and also in the tuffs of fur around the pup’s ankles.

    We trekked down through my familiar route, into the valley and meeting up with the trail where more people had the same Friday afternoon idea as I.

    Five kilometers later we had circled back to the house, both tired but refreshed from the spring air, and had a small collection of photos to swipe through as we dozed together on the couch.

  • Overnight on Public Lands

    The province where I live currently has over eleven thousand square kilometres of public lands that are available for a variety of recreational activities, including cross-country skiing, backpacking, and overnight camping.

    A small tent in a forest.

    Sadly, much of that land is at least three or four hours of driving away… so nothing is close enough for a quick weekend getaway, at least not without some substantial planning.

    With everyone sticking closer to home due to lingering travel restrictions, it seems like a lot of the so-called official campsites are (like last year) likely to be booked up quickly by the RV crowd. We enjoy our share of backpacking, though, and it seems like it might be the summer to jump with both feet into the backcountry, random, boondocking-style of camping and see where that takes us.

    I thought it would be useful for both my readers, and my future self, to write a post where I compile some resources and thoughts on the topic.

    Resources

    Public Land Use (an Overview for Alberta, Canada) is the official government website detailing many of the places, rules, and parameters of those who choose to stray from the well-travelled path and forge their own adventure.

    Alberta Parks Random Backcountry Camping is a guide from another branch of the government with some more plain language guides, rules, and hints for where and how to camp outside of designated campsites.

    Beginners Guide to Public Land Camping is an adventure blog where they have already done some resource gathering for this topic. I’m not necessarily saying go there and check their list first … but I did.

    How to Camp Respectfully is another blog-like site with a great run down of how to get away from everyone else who is trying to get away from it all and find some backcountry camping solitude with respect for the land.

    Permits in 2021?

    I'll continue to add-to and update this post as I do more research on the topic.

  • Snowshoes on a Frozen Suburban Creek

    After a bitterly cold week the sun broke through the chill for a few hours on a recent Saturday afternoon. I met with some friends to explore a local creek, frozen and snowy, on a pair of trusty snowshoes.

    Adventure journal.

    I live in a winter city.

    It is cold, bitterly cold, freeze your cheeks frostbite cold for at least three months of the year. Nearly a million people live here. While not all of them savour the dark, chilly winters, most everyone embraces the hard reality of the climate. A hardy few revel in the snow and cold, and seek adventures unique to our northern location.

    In this winter city, I live in a suburban neighbourhood framed on three sides by preserved wilderness. Incredibly, the city has made an active planning effort to avoid development (apart from trails and bridges) of the river valley (to my west and north) and the twisting feeder creek bed (to the east).

    This means that I can access a vast ribbon of natural area on foot in fifteen. Alternatively, by driving for a mere few minutes I can find a place to park and step in.

    Three people snowshoeing under a large fallen tree.

    As the local pandemic restrictions loosened over the last week, I met some of my running crew for a snowy hike in the aforementioned creek bed.

    We wore snowshoes.

    Admittedly, these were unneccessary for ninety percent of the hike.

    Yet there seemed to be something more interesting about story called “Going Snowshoeing on a Frozen Creek” than a tale merely titled “Winter Hiking!”

    The Whitemud Creek feeds into the North Saskatchewan River to the north. This is a broad, shallow river that flows east across multiple Canadian provinces and eventually drains into the Hudson’s Bay, whereas the feeder creek is a half dozen meters wide at best. Though I’ve never actually tested it I would guess I could stand in the centre in springtime and not get my shirt wet.

    The creek is frozen nearly solid by January each year, or at least solid enough to safely walk atop it. Thus, after a fresh fall of snow the creek makes for a smooth, flat course, and one boxed in on each side by an alternating combination steep banks as high as twenty or thirty meters, natural boreal forest, and a single track trail that paces through the woods that we often run in spring, summer or fall.

    Three people standing on a frozen creek.

    By far the best part of the two hour, seven kilometer hike was time spent with three friends. I had not seen in any of them in person for over two months. Over the holidays we video chatted, texted, and shared pictures and stories. This is not the same as walking beside someone through the snow, even if they are wearing a pandemic mask.

    The ice crackled underfoot.

    We climbed like giddy kids under and around multiple fallen trees that had not yet been cleared away by municipal maintenance crews.

    We skidded across patches of bare ice on snowshoes meant for trudging through deep snow.

    The sun warmed the air with a loving apricity as we paused for breath, or conversation, or just to take in the simple natural views. Even the clean, crisp air of a suburban creek bed was a brilliant change from the hour spent hunkered down in our houses simultaneously avoiding the cold and a contagious virus.

    A winter city adventure, and a local travel adventure for a strange, frustrating year.

    I don’t think I could have traded it for a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.