With the boys off school for a week, we headed west to Canmore to enjoy the beautiful Canadian Rockies up close. In addition to working our way down the lengthy “to do” list that seems to be the price you pay for the enjoyment that comes with a vacation place, we made time for some biking and walking.
We discovered there are several trails heading east from the Three Sisters area: some are fairly wide (and serve as cross-country ski trails in the winter) and others are more challenging (for us) single tracks more challenging than anything we’ve ridden in Fish Creek Park or Nose Hill Natural Environment Park. It didn’t take long to gain increased confidence, but we’ll need to ride the single-track to Dead Man’s Flats several more times before we’ll be able to get our ride:walk ratio up to something more in line with experienced Canmore riders.
One afternoon we took advantage of the unseasonably warm fall weather to ride from the Three Sisters area into the Canmore townsite. The (mostly) paved pathways generally parallel the Bow River and its many branching streams, which meant we Mrs. GeoKs’ point-and-shoot digital camera got a pretty good workout on the way to town!
Looking west along one of many streams that feed the Bow River
Looking west to Ha Ling and Mount RundleGrotto Mountain across the valley to the east
Once in town, we enjoyed some paved pathway and single-track riding along the north bank of the Bow River, stopping several times to search for geocaches in Sleepy_hollow‘s “Walk in the Park” series. All were nice, regular-sized containers and most of them were placed at nice viewing spots along the river.
Another afternoon we set out to explore on foot, cutting across the planned (but not completed) second golf course at Three Sisters to follow the Three Sisters creek up into Bow Valley Provincial Park. The most interesting thing we discovered was an old wooden water pipe. The boys enjoyed walking along several long sections.
One of many balancing opportunities along the Highline Trail
All-in-all, we enjoyed our week in Canmore. Our last day there, we woke up to snow falling in enough quantity to blanket things in white. Unfortunately, our timing was bad and we travelled with the storm all the way to Calgary. But Ol’ Man Winter was just testing us; by Friday afternoon the snow melted and we enjoyed blue skies again.
Beautiful pictures. Wow!