Western Canada

It's been so long since my last post! The adventures we've been on... Since my last blog, we've been from coast to coast across this amazing country, and everywhere in between!
I'm going to start with western Canada! We saw so many amazing things on this trip, I could write pages and pages about it, but I'll do my best to only talk about some of the highlights! 

Drumheller, Alberta
Drumheller is a town located within the Red Deer River Valley in the badlands of east-central Alberta. It's such an amazing landscape, much different from what we expected from western Canada. Badlands are a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks, such as shale or siltstone, and clay-rich soils have been eroded by wind and water. 75 million years ago, this area was covered with lush jungle and shallow seas. It's amazing what the forces of nature can do!

This erosion cares amazing features, such as Hoodoos. These result from erosion caused by wind, rain and running water, which create both physical and chemical weathering to create these shapes. The "cap" of the hoodoo is often a resistant layer or crop, which protects the lower units. Beneath the cap, the material is much softer, so it erodes away much faster than the cap layer.

Banff, Alberta

Next, we headed into the Canadian Rockies to the National Park of Banff. The Canadian Rockies are composed of layered sedimentary rock such as limestone and shale, which makes them quite different from the American Rockies, which are mostly made of metamorphic and igneous rock. Because of their makeup, the Canadian Rockies are more jagged and are more heavily glaciated. We stayed in Banff National Park, Canada's oldest National Park, and boy, are we glad we did. One of the places on our bucket list was Moraine Lake. This is a very iconic lake, due to it's amazing shades of blue. This colour is created by the refraction of light off of the rock flour in the lake. Rock flour is created from the grinding of rock by glaciers into a very fine powder. Because Moraine Lake is glacially fed, the water of the lake has a lot of rock flour in it. 

Because the lake typically doesn't crest until mid to late June, we were able to walk on the surface of the lake! 

Another iconic landmark we visited was Lake Louise. It is also similar to Moraine Lake, as it is also a glacially fed lake, thus creating the same brilliant blue colours. Lake Louise is only 5km from the hamlet of Lake Louise, whereas Moraine Lake is 14km of more rugged terrain from the hamlet, making it more difficult to get to. In fact, the road to Moraine is closed from mid-October to mid-May, due to an increased avalanche risk. 

Columbia Icefield, Alberta

The next stop on our trip was to the Columbia Icefield, the largest ice field in the Rocky Mountains of North America! They are located along the Continental Divide, along the Alberta and BC boarder. This icefield feeds eight major glaciers, including the Athabasca Glacier in which we got a chance to actually walk on! A sad fact about this amazing glacier, it recedes about 5m every year and in the past 125 years it has receded over 1.5km and lost over half of his volume. Climate change sucks! 

The Athabasca River and North Saskatchewan River both originate in the Columbia Icefield, as due the headwaters of the Columbia River. Because it is atop a triple continental divide, the waters of the Columbia Icefield eventually flow to the Arctic Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean. 

Another amazing stop we made was at Herbert Lake. Although similar to most glacier lakes, what amazed us about this lake was how still the water was. It was like a mirror! 

Revelstoke National Park, British Columbia

Next we headed to Vancouver, with a few stops along the way. Due to avalanche damage, many trails and stops were closed, so we didn't get to see quite as much as we wanted to. One of the most amazing things was the Giant Cedars in Revelstoke National Park. Some of the trees in this park are over 500 years old! What's so important about this rain forest is that it is an Old Growth Forest.  Due to logging, there are not a lot of Old Growth forests left. These forests provide a very special habitat and has an incredible biodiversity. 

Vancouver, British Columbia

Finally, we made our way to Vancouver. After some site seeing in the city, we rented some bikes and toured Stanley Park. Located in downtown Vancouver, this park was a pleasant get away from the hustle and bustle of Vancouver. Surrounded almost completely by the waters of Vancouver Harbour and English Bay, making for some incredible views. Unfortunately, the day was very rainy, so we didn't get too many good pictures! 

We ended our trip with a whale watching adventure. It was hard to get good pictures, but it was amazing! We got to see two different pods of orca (killer whales), which are the world's largest dolphin and the ocean's top predator. We also learned there were two different types or orca, resident and transient. Resident type eat only fish and usually travel in small family groups called matrilines. Transient type eat other marine mammals and tend to cruise costal waters in search of prey. 

One of the most amazing parts of the whale watching trip was getting to see Granny, who is estimated to be over 105 years old. If she is that old, she is the oldest known living orca. She is a member of the J pod, which is a resident killer whale population who frequents the waters of British Columbia and Washington State in the summer months, but roam from southeast Alaska to central California. 

Overall, our trip out west was one we soon won't forget. What I've shared here is only half of what we saw across this beautiful landscape, and we cannot wait for our next trip out to Western Canada! 

  

Limehouse Conservation Area

Last weekend we visited Limehouse Conservation Area in Halton, Ontario. I've heard a lot about this area, so I thought with such beautiful weather, why not! It's a lovely conservation area, but get ready to hike! Part of the trail cuts right through fissures in the escarpment and does require quite a bit of an effort to get through, especially when the floor of the caves are pure ice. The conservation area also has a portion of the Bruce Trail as well as some side trails. And, the neatest thing about the conservation area is some of the historical remnants left in the area. 

In the early days of settlement, way back in the 1800's, gypsum mined from beds of limewater shale were used as cement. The limewater shale occurred natural along the Niagara Escarpment, which was easily accessible in the area of Limehouse, Ontario. Without roads, it was hard to move the raw materials to different areas for processing, so everything was built right near the source of the raw materials. Here's a picture of a kiln used to cook the lime.:

And here's a picture of where they stored the lime (at least that's what I think it is, we were so tired I forget what was on the sign!)

The hiking part was pretty neat also. I'm not sure I'd recommend going in the winter, or even now, as the "hole in the wall" was extremely icy. Just look at all the snow in the fissures! 

 In order to get back onto the Bruce Trail we had to navigate down some stairs, some latters and then throug this bad boy:

This is one of the things I love about this area. Limestone is readily dissolved by water and acid rain, which creates these awesome features. You get holes in the side of the escarpment, random sink holes scattered across the ground and a tonne of other neat features. Finally, after we tackled the hole in the wall, we finally hiked down to the bottom of the escarpment, HURRAH! 

 And finally, here's a picture of some of the ruins from the old kiln and powerhouse over a river 

Sorry for such a rushed blog, we're getting ready to move to a new apartment, so things are a bit crazy! We only found one geocache on this adventure, we ended up being more focused on where are feet were going opposed to the GPS because things were so icy. We'll defiantly be back to this conservation area when all the ice and snow melt! 

Samuel Smith Park

With spring just around the corner, it's time for us to get back out hiking and of course, my new favourite hobby, geocaching! I'm still not 100%, so we took it light on Monday night and went for a walk in Colonel Samuel Smith Park in Toronto. It's a beautiful park right along a peninsula on Lake Ontario. There's a lot of wildlife, trees, plants and, as you'll see soon in some of my pictures, lots of birds! There is also a yacht club, for anyone who enjoys looking at gigantic, million dollar boats. Apparently, in the winter, they have an "ice trail" in which you can ice skate on! Pretty neat, we'll defiantly have to check it out next winter. There is also a beautiful view of the Toronto skyline, as you can see in this picture below (this is from an earlier visit to the park)

Overall, it's a very nice park right in the middle of the big city. Plus, there are quite a few geocaches in the park! We went a little bit later in the day, so we only had a chance to look for 2 of the caches in the park. Unfortunately, the first one we couldn't find because where the cache was hidden was still covered in snow and ice. However, we got an absolutely stunning view from the cache location:

The second one we found pretty quickly. I didn't grab a picture of it, but I did grab a picture of this Red Winged Blackbird near the cache, who didn't seem all that happy to have us lurking around: 

 It was getting late after we found the 2nd cache, so we decided to head back to the parking lot. As we were doing so, we saw something big and white fly overhead. We watched the bird fly over the water, back towards us, where it finally landed on a pile of rocks. Luckily we got close enough without scaring this beautiful female Snowy Owl away so could grab this stunning picture:

Probably the coolest bird I've ever seen while hiking and probably the nicest picture I've ever taken. Overall, even though we didn't really get very many caches, it was a great walk. Hopefully I'll have more posts as the weather starts to get nicer and trails get drier! 

--Nicole 

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Our very first "Geocaching Adventure" took place at the Kortright Centre for Conservation, located in Woodbridge, Ontario. If you don't know what geocaching is, it's basically treasure hunting. Someone hides a "cache", which can be anything from just a log to something filled with prizes! Then, the GPS coordinates are posted online. Cachers take those coordinates, put them into their own GPS and set off to find the cache!! Here is the very first geocache we found:

Hard to see, but if you look hard enough, you'll find it! 

Since we went in the winter, we didn't see a lot of animals or nice scenery. We saw a few birds, such as this one at a few of the bird feeders throughout the park

One interesting thing we did find in the park was a "bottomless pond" If you read some of my earlier blogs, you'll remember the term "Kettle Lake". Formed from pieces of glacial ice left behind after the glacier receded. Once these pieces of ice melt, a depression is formed. This depression fills with water to form the pond. I'm not entirely sure why they call it a bottomless pond. My guess is because this pond is relatively undisturbed due to no water (besides rain water) moving in and out of the pond. ie, no rivers or creek feeding or draining the pond. Layers of "ooze" built up at the bottom of the undisturbed water body. This ooze contains pollen, dead plants and animals that can be valuable for scientists to take a look into the past. This "ooze" makes the pond seem bottomless, which I assume is where it got it's name.

Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful hike besides the geocaches we found. We found 8 caches in the park! We had a few "did not find"s, plus we didn't have time to attempt to find them all. Therefore, we hope to come back to this conservation park at some point to finish finding all the caches :) 

Beaver Valley

In my final year at UoG, I had went on a field camp for my Natural Resources Management program. We went to Beaver Valley, which is near Flesherton, Ontario. We were tasked with creating a side trail for the Bruce Trail, which is the longest continuous footpath in Ontario. In October, I ventured back to the property in Beaver Valley in which we were working. I've added pictures as well as some background on the property and Beaver Valley as a whole, so this could be a long one! 

Beaver Valley is located in Grey County Ontario. The valley, it's soils and physiography were all created due to glacial activity. Due to this glacial activity, much of the soil in the area is formed from glacial till and is calcareous. There are also many karst features in the area (which I will be elaborating on in a later blog post!). These features are due to the underlying bedrock in the area, known as Dolostone. This type of bedrock is soft, and when the glaciers passed over this area boulders and other debris gouged out the bedrock creating many of the features seen throughout the valley (including the valley itself!!) As you'll soon learn if you read this blog often, much of Southern Ontario's landscapes are the result of glacier activity.

Anyways, now back to our hike! The property we looked at was off of Johnson side road. When I went back, our side trail still had not been made, but I had a map and many of our flags were still there! The main reason for this side trail was so hikers could get a view of the waterfall. When we went, it was very wet and hard to get all the way up to the waterfall, but here are some pictures of how close we got: 

This is a close up view of the waterfall we got when we were on the field camp. It's really neat how you can see the different colourization of the different formations, depending on what minerals are in each layer. For example, the last two layers of rock are grey (from grey limestone) and red (from red calcareous siltstone).

Another neat feature we encountered was a disappearing stream. There wasn't any water running at the time, so unfortunately, we couldn't get a good picture of it. Because the area is largely dolostone bedrock, karst features are frequent in the area. Since I have a blog coming up on karsts, I'll just quickly explain how they are formed: dolostone is water soluble and is easily dissolved by water and the acid within that water. When this happens, caves and sink holes are created. If a stream happens to run through, it looks like the stream disappears into the sink hole and re-emerges through another.

Finally, there is an amazing lookout over the entire valley. There's a bench, so it's a great place to take a break or stop for lunch. Since we went in fall, we got to see a lot of beautiful fall colours throughout the Valley.  

I defiantly recommend taking a trip to Beaver Valley. There is so much to see, from karsts to waterfalls to sinkholes and everything in between. I've barley touched on the unique landscape that is Beaver Valley and on all that there is to see. I'm sure I'll be back here at some point, and might have some more facts on this amazing and unique landscape!  

Hello to anyone who actually reads this! Clearly, I haven't been doing a very good job keeping this blog updated. I'll try to keep it updated more often! I've been very busy with work, and unfortunately had to get knee surgery which has limited how much I've been able to see. I'll post some information over the next little while to get caught up on everywhere I've been.

-Nicole 

Forks of the Credit, Caledon, ON

Today we took our new camera on its first adventure, to the Forks of the Credit Provincial Park in Caledon, Ontario. Fourteen bucks for parking, this one better be good!

FOTCR park features many glacial features, such as kettle lakes and kame hills, some neat geological formations, many different forest and meadow communities and of course, the Credit River. We didn't get a chance to hike the whole park, but what we did see was fantastic! There were so many trails, including a portion of the Bruce Trail (don't worry, I'll have another post on the Bruce Trail later!). Hopefully, we'll get a chance to go back one day and finish the rest of the trails! 

First we stumbled upon the Kettle Lake:

This is one of many different glacially formed features throughout Ontario. Kettle lakes are formed when large blocks of ice are buried by glacial outwash from the melting of glaciers. Once these ice blocks melt, a large depression is left behind, filling to become what you see above, a kettle lake! The largest kettle lake is actually located in Ontario, not far from Guelph, in Puslinch (hopefully one day I'll get over there and check it out for myself).

Next we travelled through some meadows and new growth forest, before we came to the main event, the Credit River! 

Caledon (and Orangeville) are actually where the headwaters of this beautiful river are located. It flows through Brampton, Mississauga and out into Lake Ontario. The entire river, plus all of its tributary is over 1500km long! Unfortunately, because this river is located near such urbanized areas, there have been some problems with the quality of water, especially closer to Mississauga. Hopefully, continuing restoration projects will help restore the river, so the many species in and around it can continue to flourish.

Speaking of many species, here are just some of what we saw (note: I'm still an amateur at IDing, so if I'm wrong, please, let me know!)

Belted Kingfisher

 Bumblebee

 Folwer's Toad

 Dolls Eyes (White Baneberry)

Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly

Overall, we really enjoyed this park. Although we didn't get to see everything, and I didn't really get a chance to show all we did see, it was a great experience. Just one of hopefully many provincial park adventures!