Day 36:

Post date: Aug 16, 2012 3:7:44 AM

We did not have the hot breakfast on our campsite that I had planned on this morning. Instead, we went to the Visitor Centre, watched a movie about bear safety and bought some bear spray. We found out that there was a great deal of grizzly activity all over the park, the berry season meant that the bears were extremely busy and that the park was home to some fifty or so, collared female bears...and that's just the collared ones. They don't collar the males. All of the hikes we were interested in were posted because of bear sightings. But our bear spray and the advice given by the stuffed bear puppet who narrated the Parks movie made us feel pretty safe and we decided we would hike anyway. It had to be better than sitting at our campsite listening to shotguns go off.

The hike was incredible. Kurtis doesn't think that we should hike anymore. After the last few days, it will be difficult to find a hike that can compare with what we've seen. The hike was called the Ptarmigan Cirque and it is one of the highest elevations that you can easily hike to in Canada. That meant that we climbed quickly through a sub-alpine forest and followed a waterfall into a vast (Leo's latest favourite word) alpine meadow.

This is Kurtis explaining plate tectonics to the kids.

Everything was beautiful and relaxing and amazing. We sang our hearts out all the way up and down the hill and we didn't see a single bear.