Best of Banff Tour: Day 1 16.9.
Up early, we checked out of the hostel, grabbed breakfast to eat on the road and headed to Banff to hook up trailers, feed horses and do final preparations. The amount of gear was the same, but allocating 14 days of food (13-day planned duration, plus an insurance day) was going to be tricky space-wise. Previous trips had been in the 7-10-day range; this one would be pushing the limits for an ultra-lite, unsupported adventure with no resupply opportunities. Weight wasn’t nearly as much of an issue given the simple, spartan, lightweight backpacker nature of our food. With the nature of this style of travel, we walk a lot anyway and all of us were in good shape, capable and prepared to do our fair share of walking.
We managed to get everything rationalized and allocated, then loaded the horses and hit the road. First stop, we’d drop my rig at Pipestone trailhead to be our pickup vehicle. Then, we all piled into Peter’s rig and headed to our starting point, Lake Helen trailhead.
As usual, the trailhead parking area was full, but lots of room in the big pullout overlooking Bow Lake on the other side of the highway. We parked the rig, angled, at the one end of the pullout, unloaded the horses, then saddled and packed them right there in the parking lot on the side of the Columbia Icefields Parkway. The biggest challenge was all the folk coming over to take pictures, pet the horses, chat and ask about our planned adventure. One fellow from Vancouver and his friends from Trinidad were particularly interested. It was shortly after 10AM when we were finally able to lead the horses across the highway and hit the trail. Our Best of Banff Adventure was officially under way!
The trail starts climbing, immediately, with occasional breaks in the trees to allow spectacular views down the valley and over to Bow Lake. Lots of day hikers on the trail headed up to Lake Helen. All were very polite and respectful, stepping aside to allow us to pass. Most were very friendly and happy to see horses on the trail, asking where we were going. Something along the lines of “Wow! What an adventure! Have a great trip.” was the typical response.
We watered the horses where the trail crossed Helen Creek, then stopped for a grazing break at Lake Helen, before the final push to Dolomite Pass. The high point of Dolomite Pass (2514m) would be highest pass we’d cross in our entire journey. All in, we’d gained 545m in the first 8km of our journey, not bad, and a very reasonable ~7% grade.
As we crossed Dolomite Pass, it was nothing but easy travel and spectacular views as we made our way to Lake Katherine, where we stopped for lunch, hobbled the horses and turned them loose for an extended grazing break. From there we turned north, and continued our way on the high mountain pass, enjoying the bluebird sky and incredible scenery.
Last year, I’d been on this trail with my friends, Jody and Angela, on our first major, self-guided pack trip with our own critters, gear and skills, and certain points brought back memories. The base of a waterfall, on the far side of Dolomite Pass, was one of those points. In 2023, we had to repack Cookie, my mutton withered, little mule, because her load was slipping. When Jody leaned into the final pull to tighten the lash cinch, the lash rope snapped, sending her falling, unceremoniously, onto her ass in wide-eyed surprise! After many trips, the friction in the same spot as the diamond hitch was completed, had worn the rope and while Jody isn’t that big, she IS mighty. That was all the weakened lash rope needed and it snapped, right there on Day 1 of our planned, extended adventure. Fortunately, I’d learned from my mentors and had the foresight to pack a spare, so it was just a matter of finding it. We were awful careful after that, making the final pull with fingers crossed as we tied our diamond, because we didn’t have another spare.
No such difficulties this time around, we just enjoyed the waterfall and the views as we began our long descent to Isabella Lake.
According to Banff National Parks website, the official horse camp is at the south end of Isabella. I had the exact GPS coordinates in my GPS. We wasted a lot of time looking for it in 2022, labouring through somewhat boggy swamp grass. Nothing! I knew better this time, so we just skirted the side of the lake to the great little horse camp we’d discovered in 2023, just south of the Isabella warden cabin. Day 1 was complete with 22km travelled and the highest of our mountain passes successfully crossed. We set up the electric fence enclosure for the horses, ate rehydrated chili for dinner, then rolled out our sleeping bags for a great sleep under a full moon and semi-clear sky.
Best of Banff Tour: Day 2 17.9.
It was roughly 11:30PM when I woke, instantly alert. Something was wrong. Was it just me, or were the horse bells too faint. I propped myself up and listened. My movement woke up Peter. “What is it?” he asked.
“I think the horses are out. The bells are too faint.”
He listened for a moment, then replied “It’s OK. I hear them; it’s fine.”
Knowing Peter, if he thought they were out too, he’d have been up in a flash, putting on his boots to catch them. I rolled over, closed my eyes and went back to sleep.
The next thing I hear is Peter, “Brent, take Charlie and tie him. The horses are out!”, and he hands me Charlie’s lead rope. Chris was hurriedly putting on his boots, then he and Peter left to get Rodeo and Ahi while I tied Charlie to a tree.
Shortly thereafter, Peter and Chris returned with Rodeo and Ahi, tying them to trees. They’d definitely gone through the fence, but hadn’t left. Instead, they were just grazing a short distance away; close enough for us to faintly hear the bells. Horse secured, we returned to our sleeping bags and went back to sleep.
First thing in the morning, we turned the horses loose to graze while we assessed the fence situation. Yup, someone had definitely gone through it. Judging from the long line of fence line down the trail, we’re guessing one of them went through at a midpoint in the fence line, jerking the handle loose and then dragged fence line and handle down the trail, until free of the line. Then they stopped to graze.
Mystery solved, we rolled up the fence line, gathered up strewn parts, had breakfast, packed up camp and hit the trail. We rode steady and cold, in the sunless shadow of the mountain, for almost two hours until we came across a wonderful sunshiney spot: a small, grassy meadow on the edge of a creek. Perfect spot for an extended grazing break!
From there we got into some really technical trail: narrow singletrack through the forest, with rocks, exposed roots, ruts, water, mud and slightly boggy in places. It was slower going, but didn’t faze the horses one bit. Seasoned mountain trail ponies that they are, they just confidently powered through.
Eventually the forest opened up and the terrain opened up to reveal the Siffleur Valley. We stopped on a slight knoll with a great view down the valley for lunch and another grazing break. From our vantage point we could see two mountain passes: Pipestone, to the south, and Clearwater, to the southeast. This was our first key decision point and emergency exit, if we were having trouble. Head south over Pipestone and we would reach our pickup vehicle in two days.
Fortunately, we were problem free, so we turned east, traversing Clearwater Pass, past Devon Lakes to the unofficial horse camp that would be our camp for the night. I still can’t believe our stats for the day. We’d travelled 35km, gaining 540m in elevation over a long, steady climb. Part of that trail was quite technical, necessitating a slower pace. We’d never rushed and we had a couple extended grazing breaks. Yet we’d done it all in less than 8 hours. Charlie had been a trail-eating machine, leading the way, stepping out with the rein a-swinging, keeping time with the rhythm of his pace.
Horses had a great evening grazing break through camp and the adjacent willow meadow along the trail. We had my American Goulash, a dehydration experiment I cobbled together from three separate recipes, for dinner. Clear skies, but we set up the tarp anyway, just in case. Horses were secured for the night in their electric fence enclosure on the hill above us. If any of them went through the fence, they’d have to come through camp to reach the trail.
Tomorrow, we’d ride one of my favourite sections of trail.
Best of Banff Tour: Day 3 18.9.
A great night with no rain or horsey shenanigans. As usual, we got an early start. Less usual was the joy of spending the first hour travelling in sunshine. It wasn’t long before a mountain was blocking the sun, making for a frosty grazing break in the spectacular meadow in front of Clearwater Warden Cabin.
Then, we continued on, enjoying excellent trail, spectacular views, magnificent lakes and zero elevation gain. This is the third time I’ve ridden this stretch in three years and I never get tired of it. First time was with Peter & Tina on the 3rd leg of our Great Divide Trail ride from Grande Cache to the Elk Valley in 2022. Second time was July 2023 on the Best of Banff pack trip with Jody & Angela. Such a lovely trail. The only problem is no matter which direction you come from, you’ve gotta pay a price to get here: 2-days ride and at least one mountain pass to cross.
After taking in the beauty of Clearwater, Martin and Trident Lakes, we continued through the forest until it opened up to Malloch Flats, where we stopped for lunch and a grazing break. After lunch, we continued on excellent trail to the historic Indianhead Meadows Lodge in the far northeast corner of Banff National Park. From there, we left the park, riding 2km to the luxurious Indianhead Meadows horse camp, complete with saddle rails, corral, benches, table, fire pit, rustic toilet, good water and great grazing.
I’ve gotta admit I was a little twitchy, though - the ghosts of pack trips past. It was here, last July, that Jody, Angela and I lost the horses. I woke around 5AM to go check on them and discovered the electric fence line down and the horses gone. We spent close to the next 9 hours searching, listening for bells and tracking them. Thank goodness, we finally found them on the other side of the Clearwater River. Yup, that’s right, four horses and a little mule, all hobbled, travelled about 1km, then crossed a belly deep, flowing river. What possessed them to do that, we have no idea. After finding them, we brought them back and fixed up the old broken-down corral with random poles, large branches and old baling twice and they all spent the night in there. Now, here we are, 14 months later and whadaya know, our redneck corral renovations were still holding.
We unsaddled, hobbled the horses and turned them loose to graze. At first, they just hung around camp, grazing and getting in the way, but eventually they wandered up the trail and found a favourite spot just within bell hearing distance. Every so often, one of us would head up the trail to go check on them, but they were behaving themselves and getting their fill in this particularly tasty meadow, so we let them be. As dusk rolled around, we brought them back and they spent the night in the ramshackle corral.
24km of fantastic trail and no elevation gain today. Tomorrow would be a different story as we tackled the trail up Peters Creek, which required route finding in places, and over Divide Pass.
Best of Banff Tour: Day 4
Up at first light, we turned the horses out to graze. They’d done a good job cleaning up the grass in the corral overnight, but waste no time heading up the trail to their favourite spot from last night. They graze while we have breakfast and break camp, always with one ear listening for the sound of the "happily grazing" bell, as opposed to the "heading down the trail" bell.
On the trail by 8AM, we start out on long-established, rutted horse trail, then cross the Clearwater River and start working our way up Peters Creek. The GPS shows the trail on the righthand side of the creek, and it is for a bit, but Spring runoff and landslides has decimated the trail over the years, so there’s a fair bit of route finding and just grinding up the creek. It’s a tight valley, so even thought there may not be a trail, just stay directionally correct, headed up the creek and it’s pretty much impossible to mess up. But it can be tough, slow going at times.
Fortunately, from our experience on last year’s trip, I knew there was an outfitter’s trail on the lefthand side of the creek that was like a superhighway compared to riding the creek bed, and it’s not shown on any maps, or GPS apps. Last year, we’d been working our way up the creek, watching for any sign of trail on the right, when these two ladies, each with a pack horse, came flying up the lefthand side of the creek. When we went to investigate how they were moving so fast, we discovered the trail, so tucked in behind them and made much better time.
That knowledge saved us a pile of time and effort, as we accessed the trail much earlier and had much better going to where the trail split and we turned off to Divide Pass. Just before we hit the Pass, we stopped at a great little meadow for lunch and an extended grazing break.
We were very hopeful when we got back on the trail that we might see the famous bison herd that had been introduced to the Park in 2018, with 31 animals released. As of 2024, the herd is healthy and has grown to over 130 animals. Jody, Angela and I were incredibly fortunate to encounter the herd last year as we crossed Divide Pass.
Unfortunately, no bison this year. We did encounter a Park ranger who was heading off to check some game cameras. He was stationed at Scotch Camp and would be back later in the day.
From Divide Pass, we continued on to Divide Creek warden cabin. The original cabin, a National Heritage Site built in 1922, still stands. It’s no longer in use for anything other than storage, and a new cabin has been built, but it’s still amazing to see that old building, still standing after all this time. I’m sure it could tell some pretty amazing stories!
There were two more rangers at Divide cabin. We had a great chat with them, as well. Peter mentioned that we’d seen no wildlife in the last four days and asked if they had any idea as to why. The one lady ranger tackled the answer. First, the area is so vast there are plenty of places for them to be off-trail, but she did acknowledge from review of old ranger reports that they weren’t seeing the same kind of numbers that they were 25+ years ago. There were a number of possible reasons mentioned, including climate change, willows overtaking grazing meadows and a few other things, but when all was said and done, they didn’t really seem to know. Many possible causes, in general; but no one thing, in particular.
They asked to see our permits and confirmed all was in order. They were very impressed the adventure we were undertaking, “This is a fantastic trip and you’re going to see some incredible country. It is so cool that you guys are doing this! No one does this sort of thing anymore.”
They gave us the remnants of a bag of horse feed for the horses, and with that we said our goodbyes and were on our way to Scotch Camp. We’d originally planned to stay at Divide Creek, but we’d done better than planned up the Peters Creek stretch, so figured we may as well continue on to Scotch Camp, which was only another few hours of riding. A bit of a climb up a much-used trail, then a gradual descent into the Red Deer River valley. We set up camp near the river, on the edge of a nice meadow with plenty of grazing for the horses. The weather was about to turn, with rain in the forecast and possibly snow higher up, so we set up the tarp.
Later that evening, I heard the horses in meadow whinny and went out to see what had their attention. It was the ranger we’d met on Divide Pass, returning to Scotch Camp. He’d had a good day, accomplished what he’d set out to do and was glad to see us and hear that we had travelled safely. In the course of our conversation, I inquired about what was going on with the designated horse camps. I have the GPS coordinates for every horse camp on our route, taken from the BNP website and so far, we hadn’t found a single one, in spite of proactively searching. No trail, no sign, no camp, no indication of there ever having been a camp. Our Isabella and Devon Lakes camp sites weren’t anywhere near the areas indicated by official Banff GPS coordinates. Indianhead Meadows was the nicest, but it was outside Park boundaries, and so not really an “official” BNP maintained site. Horses aren’t permitted in hiker camp areas, so where do equestrians camp? Why even go through the hassle of booking “official” sites that don’t seem to exist?
He acknowledged that there hadn’t been much maintenance of backcountry horse camping sites for many years, due to low equestrian traffic. With limited manpower and budget, they had to focus time and attention on the higher-use hiker sites and front country areas. As for booking of sites, it was so Park rangers had some sort of idea as to who might be out there and roughly where they might be, in the event of emergency, which made sense. We concluded our conversation and he invited us to stop by the warden cabin in the morning, on our way through.
28km travelled today and Divide Pass crossed. At 2412m, it was the second highest in our journey. With the weather turning, it was nice to have the two highest mountain passes in the rearview mirror. By continuing to Scotch Camp we were now a day ahead of schedule.
Best of Banff Tour: Day 5
It was a good morning. No bison causing a ruckus and stampeding the horses and no overnight grizzly incidents. It was around this time last year that a backpacking couple and their dog were killed by a grizzly in the Scotch Camp area. Turns out it was an old, starving, desperate female grizzly. She was put down by the investigating team. It was the first incident of that sort in Banff in several decades, but it still kinda weighs on a fella’s mind.
I was excited too, because after four days, I was finally entering unexplored territory. I’d ridden the trail up until Scotch Camp, last year, but then we’d turned west and headed out via the Red Deer River valley.
It had rained heavily overnight and all the mountain peaks around us were white with fresh snow. There was a high likelihood we’d encounter snow today as we went over the appropriately named Snow Creek Summit. We were saddled up and crossing the Red Deer River by 8AM. Shortly after that we reached Scotch Camp warden station, situated on the edge of a massive meadow. It was obvious why this site was selected way back in the day and remains a key station to this day.
Our Park ranger friend from yesterday came out, along with his co-worker, a female ranger. He said we’d have a spectacular day going over Snow Creek Summit. He’d been through just a few days before; the trail was clear and the Fall colours were really starting to pop. There’d definitely be snow up there today, though.
The lady ranger was asking about our trip. He had told her about us last night and she wanted more detail as to our route. We told her and she echoed the sentiment from the Divide Creek rangers, yesterday, “Wow! That’s an epic trip. Good for you guys! Nobody does things like that anymore.”
Interesting that this was the second Park ranger in two days to say that. Sure, while they may not do the ultra-lite style, I know, or am aware of, a number of folks who do pack trips. They just don’t do them in the National Parks. “Too much hassle”, “too many rules”, “permitting process sucks” and “can’t carry a gun” seem to be the most common reasons for not riding in the Parks.
Sure, I get it. I’m not a big fan of rules, fees and bureaucracy either, but once you’ve navigated the permitting process a time, or two, it’s pretty easy. Yes, the front desk people might be a little rigid, but the folk you meet in the backcountry understand what it’s like to run into a rough stretch on the trail, whether it be trail difficulties, or a lame horse. You make your plan, book your camp sites, pay for your permits and do the best you can to follow the plan from there. Pretty easy.
As for guns, I can’t think of one time where I’ve needed one, much less wished I’d had one. Backpackers and thru-hikers don’t carry guns, bear spray suffices and is required only in extremely rare circumstances. Personally, I carry bear spray. The only time a gun might be necessary is if a horse is badly injured and you have to put it down. Fortunately, that would be an exceptionally rare likelihood. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense, to my way of thinking, to formulate an all-encompassing strategy around an extremely rare occurrence and miss out on some of the most spectacular country in Canada. I mean, there’s a reason Banff was the first National Park in Canada. There’s a reason these places have been set aside and protected. Be prudent, practice good risk management and enjoy these spectacular places.
Oops! Sorry ‘bout that. I went on a bit of a rant. Let’s get back to the story.
They gave us directions to a shortcut across the meadow and where we could find the trail up to Snow Creek Summit. With that, we said our goodbyes and headed across the meadow, finding the trail exactly as they’d described. As we started climbing, a rainy, wet snow began to fall. We stopped to put on our rain gear.
The snow intensified as we climbed, with big, thick flakes falling steadily, but gently. I’m sure there would’ve been great views, but our whole world was enveloped in fog. As the snow continued to accumulate, it was very surreal. Everything was extremely quiet and all you could hear was the horse’s footsteps in the snow. So quiet; so still; so calm; so peaceful. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more beautiful or magical, Chris started singing Swiss songs. He’d never sung on the trail before and had a surprisingly great voice and even though I didn’t understand a word, everything about his singing just added to the magic of the moment. It is, without question, my favourite memory of our Banff Tour.
The snow stopped as we came off Snow Creek Summit, crossed the Panther River and stopped for lunch, hot tea and a grazing break at Windy cabin, Home of the Banff Bison Herd.
By the time we finished lunch the sky was starting to clear and as we got back on the trail heading east up the Panther River valley, we enjoyed Fall colours and the pristine white of freshly fallen snow under a bluebird sky.
We were only a couple kilometers shy of our planned camp for the night when the skies darkened and the wind picked up. It looked like a really good storm was blowing in, so we started looking for a place to stop and get camp set up before the storm hit. We found a spot, not ideal, but decent grazing for the horses and shelter from the prevailing wind for us, so we made do. We just nicely got camp set up and the wind died down, the sky cleared and the sun came out.
We took advantage of the sunshine to dry out gear and relax while the horses enjoyed the plentiful grass. Judging from all the bison poop around, they had definitely spent some time here. Down, and across, the valley there were plenty of large rocks and bushes playing with our eyes and doing a mighty convincing bison impersonation, but we didn't see any actual bison, though.
A 26km day, in all sorts of weather, with 500m elevation gain. The sky was clear when we hit the sack. It seemed to me like putting on my long underwear for the night might be a good idea.
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