Viking Ridge Trail: Version 2008

Viking Ridge is a succulent little jaunt ou a mountain, across a meadow (that is permanently a bog), and up a ridge to reach a viewpoint like no other in the region. Here are some of the highlights. It was hot, then windy and cold, then I fell (Im ok!).

Here I am starting the walk through the meadow after a sturdy climb up the first mountain section. Dripping with sweat, legs aching and heart pounding I set off across the boggy expanse of the Caribou Meadows...



ABOVE and BELOW: Caught this feller (or fellette) in the meadow and was followed by its song for many minutes as I crossed its path and found my way along the trail.




Finally!! I reached Viking Lake, nestled within a cirque or barren ridgeline above in the distance. The water was clear, perfectly clear and, based on the vegetation types I saw submerged, the water level was quite high. Absolute beauty.

Me, on the top of the ridge. Tired, hungry and satisfied!

Yes, posed. However, I did take a nap in this very spot afterwards and took my time at the peak...soaking up all that the billions of years of tectonics and evolution had to offer at this place.

BUT - we cannot avaoid the inevitable truth of such a view. With a good view comes unsightly realities, especially in Prince George. Below are three pictures of a clearcut section(s). The first pic os of both, the second and third are close ups of the clearcut on the right. On average a clearcut will be ~80 ha in size, so I will assume that both of these are around that. So, most likely we have 160 ha of desecrated forests...well hidden from view of the rest of the public who dont venture into the backcountry.

...and then I found a mushroom.

Hummingbird....tasting the air?

Shaky video, but after posting about the Sasquatch (or, better put - apparent sighgtings of a sasquatch) I thought I would put a real animal in the spotlight.

When I took the video I didnt realize the tongue action. Replay it and look for it. Was it 'licking its chops' as they are want to do, or was it flicking for insects as they are also want to do? Or, possibly, was it a secret morse-code type communication to a local Sasquatch telling him or her to vacate because a snoopy homo sapien was lurking about with a image-capturing device?!?

I call upon occam to resolve this one.....

Yes, a population of 4 exist. They hang out with me on the weekends. Sometimes we go kayaking together. Soemtimes we get together and share a pint.

Burgess Shale Sojourn: Breaking trail for Field, BC

Having grown up enamored with the aged and defunct evolutionary tangent of trilobites, the "Fossil Beds" where these, along with the perhaps more interestingly soft-bodied preservation fossils, were found held a special place in my heart and mind. I knew, as a young whipper-snapper, that I would someday hold in my hands a "real" fossil of a trilobite - not one that was purchased, not one from a museum, not one from a display case in a school, but one that I yanked from the ground with my own hands. I knew I had to go west...I knew I would.

The Burgess Shale, trapping within it 500 million year old life - trapped forever by the mineralizing efforts of time - hold secrets, a historical story and a breath of explanation on the evolution of life. It is a fantastic story told and understood by many hands and eyes and pens, none more prosaic that S. J. Gould's "Its a Wonderful Life". The key to these fossils being so important is the sof-body preservation. Anything can become a fossil - I can, you can, a tree can... . But what would fossilize is the key. Bones, teeth...no issue. Perfect fossils if left undisturbed by the savagery of time needed to produce a fossil and then erode the rock to expose it for a discerning eye to study. Skin, tongue, guts...even the food that is within the guts...different story. These things do not fossilize. Scientists can infer skin/feather coatings by fossilized bone strucutre, but rarely if ever do they get a fossil of a soft structure like skin.

But, here in the Rockies there is a story written in the rocks with all the glorifying details. The hard structures, the chitinous and calcareous skeletal and exo-skeletal cases...fossils. The skin and the guts...the last dinner of these critters...fossils. Everything...fossils. Trilobites, early limpit-like organisms....worms...mass graves...all preserved in this one stretch of shale now shunted high above the sea level at which they were laid down through milions of years of tectonics.

There is a story being told high along one craggy ridge in the Canadian Rockies. It is the Burgess Shale, telling its story one fossil at a time. Its a story I wanted to witness...so I did.


First night of the voyage, camping just south of the Athabasca Glacier...with rain, hail and, briefly, snow, accompanying me.

...and then a crow stole my dinner. Fucker.

Peyto Lake in the background...marmot in the forground giving me its best pose. Runway material...runway material... . This, and the ones below, are some wildlife encounters I got as I hiked along the quite amazing Peyto Lake interpretive trail. They all seemed to like my company..perhaps that just my perspective though :)

It would never face me, never meet eyes...but it would happily await my fumbling hands to snap a close up!

PIKA!!!!!!

Fluffy bunny....

After this hike it was back on the road to Field...the trailhead for my hike to the Burgess Shale.

Burgess Shale Sojourn: The Burgess Shale

I made it to Field, BC. I managed to book a spot with the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation (lady law requires a park naturalist to accompany each and every hiker that makes a journey to the fossil beds...so you have to book a spot - this is good. How many pieces of the puzzle would be lost to science if every person who decided to take a 20km round trip hike to the beds took a little piece home with them?). I managed to lock my keys in my car early on the morning of the hike....and once that was resolved I managed to make it to the trailhead where I met with my group (imagine my luck - a group of 13 geologists! Professional people talking geology and explaining their surroundings - as common conversation - as we trudged up the mountain. Ahhh...bliss).

And off we went, up the mountain....


Trail during the forested section.


The major warning sign along the way...


Rocky section mid way up. In the distance you can see Moraine Glacier and some pretty picturesque lateral moraines.

From forest to alpine back to forest...this time we are in an alpine forest...where the snow is yet to melt.

And back out into the rocky alpine...where the snow is still falling! Well, it fell the day before we went up.

ABOVE and BELOW: Fossilized trilobite 'pygidium' (rear end) that I dug out with me own hands.

Here is a velvet worm which displays the fascinating aspect of the Burgess Shale - soft body preservation. It is within things like this, ones even more perfectly preserved, that you can see the last meal of the critter before it died...a fossil has its gut contents fossilized and they are identifiable!

ABOVE and BELOW: These are trilobite specimens that paleontologists had found earlier in the shale and set aside for us to look at. Nearly perfect preservation.

Me standing beside the main outcropping of the Burgess Shale. Within these aged rocks are preserved ~500 million year old creatures that describe an exponential increase in biological diversity. Inspiring, to say the least. They look like rocks, they feel like rocks, they smell like rocks, they seem normal. But, within these rocks are the pieces of the puzzle that tell the precise evolutionary history of our world...of us. If a pilgrimage is necessary, it should be to places like this. Forget the superstitious regalia, forget religious dogma, forget pseudo-reality. This is our world, this is our time to understand this as best we can.

Burgess Shale Sojourn: Yoho Valley

After the grueling Burgess hike (8am - 7:30 pm on my feet trudgin around the mountain!!) I decided to take a campsite near the trailhead and not venture around searching. Turns out it was one of the nicest campsites I have been to. And it worked as a trailhead for yet another adventurous trail to the Yoho Glacier...perfection in a hotdog bun.

ABOVE and BELOW: Evening views from my tentsite.

The trail wandered throughout the forest, up the mountain side and out into the alpine. I thought this hike would be a simple one, 18km round trip but much less of an elevation gain, so I brought little water and little food. Bad. Mistake.

Heat. Getting lost. Getting lost again. Perching myself precariously on a cliff and attempting a rock climb to get higher. Getting lost again. Getting found. ... Getting hungry and thirsty!!

It was a beautiful hike, a beautiful (and long!) day...

Me playing in the barren rock-scape near the glacier. The view and the perspective is worth every step to get to places like this....

Burgess Shale Sojourn: Tyrell Museum (Drumheller, AB)

After sifting through the remnants of 500 million year old geology, I decided that it was deserved to extend the historical voyage....so I rambled on down through, and out of, the mountains and entered the lonliness of the praries to reach the famed Tyrell Museum where some of the most remarkable fossils are kept, prepared and studied. Beautiful weather, clear sky, hot hot hot and quite perfect.

The welcome...to a town that owes everything to the commitment of erosion, over many years, to expose dino bones. And then someone had to find them....and find they did.

Presentation room where they extract fossils from the host rock and prepare it for study and display.



A trilobite, not from Burgess, but of a same species that is found in the Burgess Shale.

Dino eggs.

Fossilized feathers on an early bird species.

Fossilized turtle.

After poking around the museum for a few hours, and taking a brief hike/interpretive trail around the outside to see where they found some of these things...I got back on the road and set my sights on a campsite in.....drumroll.....Stettler, AB. ALso known as "Where? Stettler?!? Never heard of it..."