In the fall of 2023 I embarked on a journey to rediscover Banff and Jasper National Parks. (I know, I saved this one for far too long!) I had spent a summer in Banff doing a theatre internship in costuming at the Banff Centre for the Arts. That would have been something like forty years ago. I shiver to think I’m that old!
It started out with a plan to visit my daughter in Vancouver, but when she asked me if we could visit the parks, which she had never seen, I realized this would be a road trip with a lot of driving if we started in Vancouver, and forest fires might get in our way as well. So we decided to meet in Calgary instead, since it’s only an hour and a half to Banff from there.
We arrived in Calgary and stayed overnight in an airport hotel. We were camping so we made a stop at a local thrift store to pick up a cooler and some blankets. It’s cold up in them mountains!
The next morning we went back to the airport to pick up our rental car, which turned into a van. This turned out to be a very savvy move since camping in late September can be chilly. We drove to Jasper first, which took most of the day, after picking up some food and camp fuel in town. I brought an extra bag with camping gear that I had borrowed from some friends who liked to hike and camp. This equipment is light and small, so everything I needed fit into one large dufflebag.
On our way into the town of Jasper, we were greated by a herd of elk crossing the road. You’ll note that the skies were kind of brownish, probably from some far away forest fire that the wind had brought in our direction. The campground just outside of Jasper was not overly crowded, and they had brand new washrooms/showers that were warm and civilized. It was cold out, and it only got colder at night.
Jasper is classified as a dark sky preserve and they limit lighting to only essential paths in the campground and other areas, so it was very dark on my way back to the site after doing my night time rituals. I heard a very strange, loud and unfamiliar sound. Like a wailing donkey mixed with a howling loon. I had no idea what it was, but it was loud and seemed very close. My daughter thought it might be a bird, but I thought it must be big to be so loud.
We surfed a bit with our phones and landed on the probable cause, thanks to Youtube. It was a male elk’s rutting call. And it was indeed very close, as we found out in the morning when we saw the culprit and his herd. It was likely the same group we had spotted on the road the night before. We were warned by the park staff, however, to avoid them, as a large male elk in season is more dangerous than a bear, and, as luck would have it, we had arrived during their season. Avoiding them was not so easy. We had to keep away from all of them, as the male protects his herd, but they wandered all over the campground during the day. We even found a young one nibbling grass at our site after we returned in the afternoon.
I had imagined that camping in the cold would simply require bundling up in a sleeping bag wearing extra clothing, but I had not counted on how I would be in the cold all day long as well. It wasn’t so bad when we were hiking and driving around, but at the site, preparing our meals, with the wind blowing or a light rain, it became quite uncomfortable. I didn’t realize until later that they had provided a shelter with a fireplace you could cook at and picnic tables that would have at least offered some shelter from the wind. Live and learn.
