Podcasts about alpine club

Året er 1888 og engelske Albert Mummery vil forsøge at blive den første, der når toppen på det mere end 5200 meter høje bjerg Dykh Tau - det stejleste og næsthøjeste bjerg i Kaukasus. Tidens sidste store udfordring. Mummery var kernen af The Silver Age of Mountaineering og repræsenterede den nye tid og de bjergbestigere, der ønskede at klatre på egen hånd. Og ad de mest vanskeligste ruter. Men i London sad der en gruppe ældre hærdede bjergbestigere og fulgte med i Mummerys bedrifter. De var samlede i verdens første bjergbestigerklub; den hæderkronede Alpine Club. Hvorfor mødte Mummery så meget modstand fra de gamle i klubben? Og fik han overbevist de ældre om, at hans tilgang var fremtiden?Medvirkende: Søren Smidt, medlem af Eventyrernes Klub. Søren er fascineret af Kaukasus og har klatret flere bjerge dernede, blandt andet det højeste bjerg i Europa, Mount Elbrus, hvor han har været på toppen tre gange.

Kasia wears many hats: a Mountain Leader, Rock-Climbing Instructor, and an aspiring alpinist. But above all, she's a lover of adventure. Her story began in 2008 when she left Poland in search of a better life. Little did she know, this journey would lead her to incredible heights—both literally and metaphorically. Life in a new country wasn't easy. Kasia had to work hard, raise a child alone, and worry about making ends meet. But through it all, her passion for the mountains burned bright. Despite the demands of her daily life, Kasia couldn't ignore the call of the wild. So, she took a leap of faith. She left behind the security of her job to pursue her love for climbing full-time. Her greatest adventures awaited in the Himalayas, where she tackled peaks that few had ever dared to climb. But for Kasia, the thrill of exploration doesn't end there. Her dream is to keep discovering new corners of the world, to seek out untouched landscapes and experience the beauty of the unknown. *** Don't miss out on the latest episodes of the Tough Girl Podcast, released every Tuesday at 7am UK time! Be sure to hit the subscribe button to stay updated on the incredible journeys and stories of strong women.  By supporting the Tough Girl Podcast on Patreon, you can make a difference in increasing the representation of female role models in the media, particularly in the world of adventure and physical challenges. Your contribution helps empower and inspire others. Visit www.patreon.com/toughgirlpodcast to be a part of this important movement.  Thank you for your invaluable support!   Show notes Who is Kasia Moving to the UK in 2008 at 20 years old Not being outdoorsy while growing up in Poland The challenges of first moving to the UK Learning the language and the culture  The challenge of finding her first job  Getting a job in a chicken factory for 2 years Not having the energy to spend time outdoors  Work - home - work - home Becoming a mother in September 2009  Wanting to do more with her life Applying for new jobs every 2 years Doing qualifications  Going through a divorce and why it was so chaotic for a few years Getting her driving licence at 26 years old Starting to explore the surrounding mountains in Herefordshire  Being invited to a local climbing centre Starting with bouldering  Spending time outdoors with her young daughter Getting new gear and finding an outdoor instructor to learn more skills in the outdoors Sharing her dreams of becoming a member of mountain rescue  Speaking with a mountaineering instructor and receiving advice about how to start How to get registered with Mountain Training  Providing evidence of her experience in the mountains and building her portfolio  QMDs - Quality Mountain Days  Doing her ML Training in 2020 Passing her Rock Climbing Instructor in 2021  Giving herself between a year and 18 months Getting qualified and the next steps Being supported by her partner  Wanting to gain experience with Raleigh International in a volunteer position  Having no job and no experience as a mountain leader Going through a very stressful time, not knowing what was next  Using FB groups to get work  Working with the British Army Gaining confidence and new skills working as an outdoor instructor  Managing stress and uncertainty Going with the flow and why the journey is so important Not wanting to feed the negative thoughts, or overthink things Wanting to share her passion for the outdoors Inspiring other to follow their outdoor dreams Dealing with Imposter syndrome while working in the outdoors Working towards her Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor  Having her assessment booked for May 2025 The preparation for her assessment and getting in enough rock climbing experience  The sacrifices that need to be made The struggle of finding people to climb with Enjoying the process and meeting so many like minded people who have similar interests and passions How her love for the mountains has grown Starting to climb in the Alps Spending time in the Himalayas in India  Joining the Alpine Club  Learning new skills  Wanting to climb higher and go on expeditions  Womens Trad Festival  Reflecting back on the progress she's made over the past 3 years How to connect with Kasia on Instagram Future goals Final words of advice for other women who want to make a career change Ignore the negative opinions of the people around you  Keep working hard if you want to achieve your goals.    Social Media Instagram: @mtns_and_me   

What should you do if you have 10+ years of working experience but are looking for an MBA-type experience to build your skills and network? Richard Campbell, Founder and CEO of 10Adventures, joins the show to discuss his experience with three mid-career MBA alternatives: Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development (HBS PLD), London Business School's Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy (LBS Sloan Masters), and 500 Global's Accelerator program. Listen on to learn more about the learning experience, alumni networks and benefits of attending each of these programs! Topics Introduction (0:00) Richard's career arc before business school (4:40) Harvard Business School Program for Leadership Development (8:40) The London Business School Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy (22:45) 10 Adventures and the 500 Global Accelerator Program (48:00) Richard' advice for entrepreneurs considering mid-career MBA alternatives (59:00) About Our Guest Richard Campbell is Founder and CEO of 10Adventures, which helps people book personalized, active vacations worldwide. Before 10Adventures, Richard worked as COO of Vista Projects, an industrial engineering firm that helps clients navigate the digital transformation of their operations. Richard got his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary; after ten years growing Vista Projects, he took Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development and then completed London Business School's Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy. In 2023, he joined 500 Global's Accelerator program in Calgary, where he currently resides. Richard also hosts the 10Adventures Podcast and serves on the Board of Directors for The Alpine Club of Canada. Show Notes Richard Campbell on LinkedIn 10Adventures Harvard Business School Program for Leadership Development The LBS Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy 500 Global Richard's Review of HBS LDP program Richard's Review of the LBS Sloan Masters program Richard's Review of 500 Global's Alberta Accelerator John Kotter's 8-Step Change Model from Leading Change Verne Harnish's Scaling Up Platform How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christenson Dan Cable Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Entrepreneur's Organization (EO) Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) Get free, personalized school selection help at Touch MBA: https://touchmba.com Learn proven strategies to get into top-ranked MBA programs and optimize every part of your application through Touch MBA's Admissions Edge Course. See resumes, essays and case-studies of admitted MBAs. Save thousands of dollars on consulting fees: https://go.touchmba.com/edge 

What should you do if you have 10+ years of working experience but are looking for an MBA-type experience to build your skills and network? Richard Campbell, Founder and CEO of 10Adventures, joins the show to discuss his experience with three mid-career MBA alternatives: Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development (HBS PLD), London Business School's Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy (LBS Sloan Masters), and 500 Global's Accelerator program. Listen on to learn more about the learning experience, alumni networks and benefits of attending each of these programs! Topics Introduction (0:00) Richard's career arc before business school (4:40) Harvard Business School Program for Leadership Development (8:40) The London Business School Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy (22:45) 10 Adventures and the 500 Global Accelerator Program (48:00) Richard' advice for entrepreneurs considering mid-career MBA alternatives (59:00) About Our Guest Richard Campbell is Founder and CEO of 10Adventures, which helps people book personalized, active vacations worldwide. Before 10Adventures, Richard worked as COO of Vista Projects, an industrial engineering firm that helps clients navigate the digital transformation of their operations. Richard got his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary; after ten years growing Vista Projects, he took Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development and then completed London Business School's Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy. In 2023, he joined 500 Global's Accelerator program in Calgary, where he currently resides. Richard also hosts the 10Adventures Podcast and serves on the Board of Directors for The Alpine Club of Canada. Show Notes Richard Campbell on LinkedIn 10Adventures Harvard Business School Program for Leadership Development The LBS Sloan Masters in Leadership and Strategy 500 Global Richard's Review of HBS LDP program Richard's Review of the LBS Sloan Masters program Richard's Review of 500 Global's Alberta Accelerator John Kotter's 8-Step Change Model from Leading Change Verne Harnish's Scaling Up Platform How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christenson Dan Cable Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Entrepreneur's Organization (EO) Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) Get free, personalized school selection help at Touch MBA: https://touchmba.com Learn proven strategies to get into top-ranked MBA programs and optimize every part of your application through Touch MBA's Admissions Edge Course. See resumes, essays and case-studies of admitted MBAs. Save thousands of dollars on consulting fees: https://go.touchmba.com/edge 

On this day in 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the peak of Mount Everest.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ahead of the 2024 Everest Climbing Season, Mountain Voices shines a spotlight on the world's highest, most iconic and debated mountain.It is the 100th anniversary of Mallory and Irvine's fated last attempt to climb Everest. They've come to define that heroic post first world war period of exploration in their experimental oxygen sets and (by our standards) primitive clothing. What would define the present age? The age of commercialisation? A trophy achievement for rich individuals with limited climbing experience, blindly sliding up a rope fixed by teams of Sherpas? Is climbing Everest actually an achievement? And what is the current situation for the sherpas who support every climb? Opinions come from three expert figures:Ed Douglas the author of numerous books on Everest and the Himalayan region including the biography of Tenzing Norgay, Chomolungma Sings the Blues: Travels Round Everest and Himalaya: A Human History.Victor Saunders is a UIAGM guide who's led numerous ascents around the world. His 1st ascents include Panch Chuli V and Golden Pillar of Spantik. His most recent was Sersank in 2016. Victor's books have won prizes in Canada France and England. he's a former president of the Alpine Club, and has made SIX ascents of Everest. Young Hoon Oh, is a Korean climber and anthropologist. He has made four attempts on Mt Everest, three of which were to do with his ethnographic research and he summited in 2012. He's also lived among Nepali for two years and he's a contributory author of Other Everests: One mountain, many worlds, a scholarly book published in 2023. --Mountain Voices is a podcast series from the International Climbing and Mountaineering Federation (UIAA)Presented and produced by Tarquin CooperCo-produced by Peter BourneEdited by Tom Tushaw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The BLBCA welcomes you back to another episode of Mountain Escapes. In this episode, we turn the tables on our regular host. Jeff Bolt, our regular producer, puts Brad in the hot seat. Brad has extensive experience in the adventure tourism industry. He started in Kootenay Valley with his Dad who was a horsepacker. Brad ran the Alpine Club of Canada's GMCs, and was part-owner of Golden Alpine Holidays, both for over 25 years. He is the Executive Director of the BLBCA and owner/operator of Colwest Alpine Adventures. Listen in to the many stories and insights he has to share.

Overcoming grief, historian Rachel Hewitt's new book mixes recent personal history and her experiences of fell running and lockdown with her research into the pioneering mountain climber known as Lizzie Le Blond (1860 – 1934). In 1907, Le Blond set up the Ladies' Alpine Club and over her lifetime made 20 first ascents of different peaks. Chris Harding is joined by Rachel Hewitt, Dr Ben Anderson from Keele University, and science writer Caroline Williams to discuss alpine sports, running, risk and research into health and fitness ahead of Mental Health Awareness Week. Producer: Julian Siddle Rachel Hewitt and Ben Anderson were both chosen as BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers in the scheme which turns research into radio. Rachel's book In Her Nature How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors : A Past, Present and Personal Story is out now. You can hear more from Dr Ben Anderson in an episode called Simplify your life - ideas from 20th-century radicals https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d826 Caroline Williams is the author of Move ! The new science of body over mind. You might be interested in other Free Thinking discussions all available as Arts & Ideas podcasts, on BBC Sounds and the programme website Running https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087yrll Tacita Dean, Mountains, John Tyndall https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fkt3 Radio 3 has a series of programmes exploring different music for Mental Health including special episodes of the Classical Mixtape

EPISODE 7.20 Chic Scott is a renowned mountain adventurer, guide, and author who has been exploring high places for over 50 years. Born in Calgary in 1945, Chic is a fourth-generation Albertan and a third-generation Calgarian with a family history of organizing amateur sports. He represented Alberta at the Canadian Junior Golf Championship in 1961 but took up mountain climbing and skiing the following year and has been passionate about these pursuits ever since. Chic has climbed and skied in many locations around the world, including the Canadian Rockies, the European Alps, and the Himalayas. He has organized clubs and foundations, written books, and worked as a mountain guide. Some of his notable achievements include the first winter ascent of Mount Assiniboine in 1967, the first successful completion of the Jasper to Lake Louise High-Level Ski Traverse, and the first Himalayan summit reached by a Canadian, Myagdi Matha, in 1973. Chic Scott is an epic writer with over 150 articles or journal contributions and 17 books as writer or co-writer, including "Summits and Icefields: Alpine Ski Tours in the Canadian Rockies", "Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering", "Ski Trails in the Canadian Rockies", "Powder Pioneers: Ski Stories from the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains", and "Deep Powder and Steep Rock: The Life of Mountain Guide Hans Gmoser". Chic's guidebook, "Summits and Icefields," is considered a classic of the genre, while "Pushing the Limits, the Story of Canadian Mountaineering," is considered the authority on the subject. He has received honorary memberships in the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, the Calgary Mountain Club, The Alpine Club of Canada, and the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. In 2000, Chic received the Bill March Summit of Excellence Award at the Banff Mountain Film Festival, and in 2018, he received the Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Chic currently resides in Banff, Alberta, where he writes books and magazine articles, gives presentations on mountain topics, and enjoys hiking, skiing, and climbing in the nearby Rocky Mountains. Dom: Intro Chic: From golf to skiing and mountaineering 4:35 Dom: Talks about the changes and prep 7:35 Chic: Illustrates the mountains melting 11:40 Chic: Weather and going into the unknown 15:59 Dom: Ques up the Banff film festival origins 25:05 Chic: Age is a number 31:12 Chic: Explains his love for literature 35:00 Chic: You thought your move was bad 40:00 Chic: Rappelling lesson learned 56:55 Dom: Outro Socials: The Avalanche Hour Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/theavalanchehourpodcast/ Guest - https://www.instagram.com/ Links: Chic Scott's Website - https://chicscott.com/index.htm Whyte Museum Fireside chats - https://www.whyte.org/digitalvault/categories/fireside-chats Whyte Museum Pushing the Limits Legacy interview series https://www.whyte.org/pushing-limits-legacy Sponsors for this episode: Wyssen : https://www.wyssenavalanche.com/en/ Crew: Host - Dom Baker - https://instagram.com/dom_baken/ Producer - Cameron Griffin - https://www.instagram.com/backcountrycam/ Donate: The Avalanche Hour Podcast - https://www.theavalanchehour.com/donate The American Avalanche Association - https://www.americanavalancheassociation.org/donate Music: Gravy - https://soundcloud.com/gravy Devil's Punchbowl - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0I2zpUuy1U

About Lida Frydrychova :Although Lida is not a real estate expert, she enjoys living in Calgary and adventuring in the Canadian Rockies. Lida works for Suncor as a manager of Refined Products Accounting and likes to spend her free time in the mountains. She has also been volunteering for many years with the Alpine Club of Canada and more recently with the Lake Louise Hostel. Calgary Real Estate by The Howard Team eXp REALTY Email: hello@thehowardteam.net​Bryon Howard - 403-589-0004 Ben Archibald - 403-926-9087 Shirley Wright - 403-589-0021 Calvin Currie - 587-971-4999 Cole La Valley - 403-850-6610 Let's be friends. Follow Top Producing, often seen in The Globe and Mail, eXp Realtor Bryon Howard on Social - https://www.thehowardteam.net/ https://www.facebook.com/LivingInAltadore/ https://www.instagram.com/living_in_marda_loop/ https://www.instagram.com/calgary_living/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryonhoward/ https://www.pinterest.ca/MyCalgary/ https://twitter.com/Calgary_Life Podcast - Calgary Living: Real Estate and Lifestyle with Host Bryon Howard https://dashboard.simplecast.com/shows/9da83ac2-e7ba-432a-ac57-9328cd4702e7/episodes/4416b442-1fd1-42b2-be7a-8574639bcdc0

I don't know about you but when I first started climbing..creating a first ascent and developing a route was something my regular climbing partner and I would fantasize about—looking out the car window on long road trips for any rock formation that might have been untouched, a prize yet to be claimed. However, like most of you, I am sure, I was too enthralled in actually climbing to take the time, money, and focus to become a route developer. With climbing being so accessible, and there being over fifty thousand published routes on Mountain Project between California and Canada alone, it is easy to just enjoy climbs and forget all the work it took to establish them. Today, our topic is route development and we get to sit down with a local climber and route developer here in Reno, his name is Colby Wangler. In our conversation, we talk about how Colby found climbing and what lead him to become a route developer, the ins and out of the route developing process, and how Colby both developed and climbed his first own 5.13. We cover how we, the majority, the people who get enjoy the work of others, can support, maintain, and give back to the areas we love so much. And finally, we talk about a potential dark side to this amazing sport we call climbing. Please rate, review the show, and share this podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools to help us out.Contact us:IG: @the.climbing.majorityEmail: theclimbingmajoritypodcast@gmail.comResources: Please help support the development and maintenance of your local climbing area. Here are some places that will be a good start and could use our support.Alpine Club of CanadaAmerican Alpine ClubSquamish Access SocietySea to Sky Climbing Hardware FundBritish Mountaineering Crag Care FundAccess Fund USA (Register and Adopt a Crag)

Sheldon Clare holds a Master of Arts degree in military history from Norwich University at Northfield, Vermont, and a Bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He teaches history and English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, BC. Sheldon is active in the Prince George community and has served two terms as the president of the local Royal Canadian Legion. He spent time as a reserve officer teaching cadets and also qualified as a military parachutist and is a recipient of the Special Service Medal with NATO bar and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal. Sheldon is an active mountaineer and is a past three term chair of the Prince George Section of the Alpine Club of Canada. He was a volunteer for the Canada Winter Games and Race Director for the Northern Hardware Prince George Centennial Canoe Race. Sheldon was elected President of Canada's National Firearms Association in June 2010. Prior to that he served as BC Branch President of the National Firearms Association for 11 years, and was a director and area representative of the NFA for several years before that. Sheldon is also past president of the Prince George Rod and Gun Club. Sheldon resides with his family in Prince George, BC and continues to play an instrumental role in the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies on November 11th. If you would like to support the Prince George Legion, please visit https://legion43pg.ca/

Highly lauded and acclaimed architect Vladimir (Lado) Alexi-Meskhishvili (1915-1978) worked on the designs of some of Soviet Georgia's most iconic buildings. A partial list includes: Sanatorium “Imereti”, Tskaltubo (1957), Tbilisi Sports Palace, Tbilisi (1961), Restaurant “Iori”, Tbilisi (1962), Lower floor of Freedom Square metro station, (then “Lenin Square”), Tbilisi, (1967) Agricultural Institute of Georgia, Tbilisi (1970) The Victory Memorial of Vake-Park, Tbilisi (1970) Chess Palace and Alpine Club, Tbilisi (1973) The Central Postal Service and Telegraph, Tbilisi (1980) On this episode, we discuss life and legacy of Meskhishvili as well as architecture as an art and practice in Soviet Georgia with our guest, freelance researcher, curator and writer Nini Palavandishvili. Palavandishvili co-curated a current exhibition entitled Lado Alexi-Meskhishvili, Architect on the Edge of Epochs Her research focuses on Mid-century modernist architecture, monumental and decorative art, their role in a time of creation, and current interpretations. In 2018-2020 in collaboration with the Georgian National Committee of the Blue Shield, Nini worked on the Conservation and adaptation plan for the Tbilisi Chess Palace and Alpine Club building. Among other publications, her most recent is: Art for Architecture - Georgia. Soviet Modernist Mosaics from 1960 to 1990 .

Jordan Meeder talks about hiking the Loyalsock Trail and how a chance encounter with Ruth Rode inspired him to create a short documentary about the trail.  Watch the documentary here.Learn more about Jordan Meeder here."The name Loyalsock Creek is from the Indian phrase, “LAWI-SAQUICK,” meaning middle creek, since it flows between Muncy Creek and Lycoming Creek. The Loyalsock Creek begins in Wyoming County and ends at Montoursville, PA, where it flows into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. The Loyalsock Trail (LT) is a footpath which begins on PA Route 87, 9.0 miles north of the Route 87-Montoursville Exit of Interstate 180 (US Route 220), and ends at a parking lot on Meade Road, 0.2 miles from US Route 220. The entrance to Meade Road is 2.4 miles north of the intersection of Routes 220 and 154 near Laporte. The LT follows mountain ridges and streams through the Loyalsock Creek watershed as it travels through the woods on footpaths, old logging roads and abandoned railroad grades. It passes through parts of the Loyalsock State Forest for most of its 59.21 miles. The extremes of elevation are 665′ at its lowest, and 2140′ at its highest." (source: Alpine Club of Williamsport)Visit the Alpine Club of Williamsport to learn more about the Loyalsock Trail and how you can order their trail guide.Connect with Lori:Instagram: @thehikepodcastTwitter: @thehikepodcastFacebook: @thehikepodcastSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/thehikepodcast)

ご意見・リクエスト等は、以下よりお願いいたします。 https://alpineclub.tokyo/contact/ *大寒の候 *山岳会を発足した背景 *発足後、集まった仲間たち *現在の仲間たち *山行は、感性的な価値観より本性・本能の相性 *会員募集中 *YouTubeチャンネル登録お願いいたします。 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZfu9KfFQIolorINd9000Jw *中年あるある（健康事情） *健康診断は大事 パーソナリティ：まつ、ぶし 収録日：2022年01月30日　配信日：2022年01月31日

Earlier this summer, bars and restaurants in the U.S. fully emerged from the pandemic, many operating under new sets of guidelines to keep guests and staff safe. With the delta variant now surging and wildly different rules and regulations taking shape across the country, we check in with bar owners in different parts of the country to see what their experiences have been and how they're navigating these new challenges: Jessica Sanders from DrinkWell in Austin, Texas, and Briana Volk from Portland Hunt & Alpine Club in Portland, Maine. Radio Imbibe is the audio home of Imbibe magazine. In each episode, we dive into liquid culture, exploring the people, places, and flavors of the drinkscape through conversations about cocktails, coffee, beer, spirits, and wine. Keep up with us at imbibemagazine.com, and on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and if you're not already a subscriber, we'd love to have you join us—click here to subscribe.

On this episode we talk about ski touring the Coast Mountains of British Columbia with John Baldwin. John narrates his life exploring the mountains and backcountry skiing. Join us as John and our hosts discuss the rewarding experience of adventuring the Coast Mountains and disclose the difficulties of skiing the high country. Learn more about mountaineering and backcountry skiing from a seasoned outdoor enthusiast and fellow adventure traveller. This episode will undoubtedly inspire you to get out into the wilderness and plan your next ski touring adventure into the backcountry.    Guest Profile John Baldwin is a legendary guidebook author and explorer of BC's coast mountains.  Author of "Exploring the CoastMountain on Skis", he also is the publisher of numerous other books and maps to help people explore the outdoors. In 2020 he was awarded an honorary lifetime membership in the Alpine Club of Canada. You can find out more about John here. Check out our favorite backcountry ski tours at 10Adventures.  Follow us on Instagram @10Adventures for more adventure travel inspo

In this episode, Joey reads the article for Adolphus Warburton Moore. Article can be found here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphus_Warburton_Moore. Episode Image by By Unknown author - Gardiner and Pilkington, ‘In memoriam: Miss Lucy Walker', facing pp. 98–9, Alpine Club, London, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15891947

In our first interview episode, we welcome Jon Gupta from Mountain Expeditions. Jon's career has seen him swimming with turtles off the coast of Odisha, India, competing in the 430-Yukon Arctic Ultra to summiting the tallest mountains on the planet - including the tallest mountain on the planet, three times. Jon is a Montane Athlete, member of the Alpine Club, ambassador for the Youth Adventure Trust, and a member of both the Mountain Training Association and the Association of Mountaineering Instructors.  His career sees him running his own mountain expedition company - aptly called Mountain Expeditions - facilitating and taking part in the 7 summits world record, climbing mountains incredibly quickly, travelling from continent to continent, summiting Everest three times, giving his time to host and run altitude and skill seminars, and still finds the time to escape to places like Chamonix and Scotland for some me-time.  Be Bothered  One of the key take-aways you should take from this, is Jon's infectious attitude to "Be Bothered". It's similar to Lucy Shepherd's view too.  You know when you wake up, need the loo, don't go, carry on not going, keep trying to sleep, and then two hours later you go and fall alseep within five minutes of having done so? This is the exact situation where Jon says you should "Be Bothered".  Quite often when you finish a day on expedition, all you will want to do is sit back and relax. But really, you can't. Especially when it comes to high altitude. You need to get your kit prepped, square away your admin, melt snow for the next day's water... everything.  There's no need to explain further, but Jon does explain how you can practice for this in everyday life. Things like taking out the recycling. You may think "I'll do it later". But instead, you should "Be Bothered" and get it done straight away.  Much like the gym, this works for your physical fitness preparation too. His own example was cycling uphill. Instead of looking at the hill as a total point, he says instead to break it down to manageable distances, and repeat those small distance intervals until you reach the top.  If you want to grow as a person, or simply prepare for the high-altitude mountains, do this.  Short Term Loss, Long Term Gain  Jon touches upon this too - and it is so relatable!  Talking from experience, we all need to start thinking what our long-term goals are. It doesn't mean you need to stop living today. Just a reminder to start thinking of where you want to be, and is what you're doing right now going to get you there.  A Deep And Vast Experience  Jon has a huge experience in climbing Everest, Denali and the rest of the 7 summits. He has speed records and experience in such huge experience.  Hear how Jon compares the North and South approaches on Everest, climbing mountains, dealing with altitude, endurance races, living in North Wales and more.  -----------------  If you enjoy the show please subscribe/follow and share with a friend!  If you really enjoy the show please check out our Patreon site here. Supporting through Patreon really helps cover costs and allow to invest more time into the quality!  To come on the show or work with me, please email on: btmtravelpod@gmail.com  Join in with the community. Instagram/Twitter/Facebook and our new Facebook Page to share your own photos and videos here Between The Mountains – Adventure Travel Podcast https://betweenthemountains.org/2020/06/24/jon-gupta/ 

Our special edition podcast for UN International Mountain Day 2019 (December 11th) brings you a panel of experts discussing the impacts of climate change on mountain ecosystems and communities. Canadian Mountain Network trainee and Mount Royal University journalism student Blaise Kemna recorded this engaging event held on November 4, 2019 at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, AB. The discussion features the perspectives of mountain researchers and guides who have contributed to The Alpine Club of Canada's annual State of the Mountains Report: Will Gadd - Named Mountain Hero by UN Environment; ACMG mountain guide; renowned mountain athlete Jim Gudjonson - Director of the Sustainability Office, Thompson Rivers University; ACMG/IFMGA mountain guide; and Vice-President for Facilities, Alpine Club of Canada David Hik - Professor of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University Lael Parrott - Professor of Earth, Environmental, Geographic Sciences and Biology, UBC Okanagan; Vice-President for Access & Environment, Alpine Club of Canada Dan Shugar - Associate Professor of Geosciences; and Director, Environmental Science Program, University of Calgary

PWA Commissioner Corey Spade and The Temple's Tex Lexus joined me ahead of their huge lumberjack match September 28 at the Alpine Club in Kitchener, ON. The two hated rivals went at it verbally as they discussed the match and its special stipulations - The loser gets their head shaved and the winner will be the PWA Commissioner.  

This week Lorna struggles with her podcast report, but it's actually fascinating, all about the rise in popularity of mountaineering. There are a lot of peak names, but we brush over them, but you can find them on the Twitter so keep your eyes pealed. There are some interesting tales, including the creation of the Alpine Club and the women of the Golden Age.  Matt struggles with his guessing this week and he tells of our own recent walking experience on New Years Day, when we were very unprepared for a walk/climb with friends.  Twitter: @IdiotHistoryPod Facebook: @IdiotsTalkHistory    Instagram: @IdiotsTalkHistory Email: IdiotHistoryPod@gmail.com Individual Twitters: @MattSingleton17  @lornabarryy

A new report prepared by the Alpine Club of Canada highlights the impacts of climate change on many aspects of Canada’s mountain landscapes from glaciers to treelines to ski resorts. The 2018 State of the Mountains report says mountains are experiencing unprecedented pressures. We speak with co-editor, Lael Parrott who is with both UBC Okanagan and the Alpine Club of Canada.

A new report prepared by the Alpine Club of Canada highlights the impacts of climate change on many aspects of Canada’s mountain landscapes from glaciers to treelines to ski resorts. The 2018 State of the Mountains report says mountains are experiencing unprecedented pressures. We speak with co-editor, Lael Parrott who is with both UBC Okanagan and the Alpine Club of Canada.

Welcome to episode 57 of the Mountain Nature and Culture Podcast, I'm your host, Ward Cameron and I'm recording this on April 1, 2018. This week I look at three amazing fossils that are teaching palaeontologists about the evolution of some of the world's oldest creatures. I also look at the return of red fox to the Rocky Mountains. It's an action-packed episode so with that said, let's get to it. Some wisdom from John Muir I wanted to start today with a fabulous quote by John Muir. As a hiking guide and naturalist, I see too many people striding through the wilderness, eager to reach a destination, or bag a peak, yet they miss the beauty that's all around them. For me, the best way to enjoy nature is to simply bathe in it. Spend time in the wilderness and let the energy and the ambience wash over you. If you really want to experience the mountain west, then stop, sit down and listen. Wander slowly along trails while filling all of your senses with endless stimulation. Feel the bark of a tree; listen for the sounds that make up the unique chorus of each location; get down on your knees and look at the tiniest things you can find; and become a part of something far bigger than you. John Muir was one of the greatest naturalists, nature writers, and activists that the U.S. has ever produced, along with the likes of Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Aldo Leopold. He explored the American west during the mid to latter parts of the 19th century and was instrumental in helping to protect landscapes like Yosemite, Sequoia National Park, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Muir first arrived in California in 1868 and soon after made a pilgrimage into the Yosemite Valley. Muir wrote that: "He was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower". He was one of the first people to recognize the action of glaciers on the landscape and helped debunk the existing beliefs that the vistas were the result of earthquakes as opposed to glaciers. Muir was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park, first as a state park in 1890, and then as a national park in 1906. In 1892, he helped found the Sierra Club and served as its first president. By the time he died in 1914, he had published some 300 articles and 12 books. John Muir spent his entire life exploring, bathing in, documenting, and fighting to protect natural, intact ecosystems. The John Muir Trail is one of the U.S.'s most beloved trails, yet had you asked what he thought of hiking, this was his response: "I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them." - John Muir I couldn't agree more. Next up more Burgess wonders New Burgess Shale Discoveries The various exposures of the Burgess Shales in Yoho and Kootenay National Parks continue to provide new and exciting discoveries. It seems that each year introduces us to species never before described, or spectacular new fossils of old friends that allow palaeontologists to reclassify them based on new evidence revealed. One such fossil is the newly described Habelia optata. This fossil is not new to palaeontology. In fact, Charles Walcott, the original discoverer of the Burgess Shales, described the first specimen in 1912, only three years after he first stumbled on this bonanza of ancient life. A recent study published in BMC Evolutionary Biology has shed some amazing new light on this unique creature according to lead scientist Cédric Aria. In a recent CBC article, he stated: "It's like a centipede or perhaps an insect that would have not one pair of mandibles, but five." One of the challenges with fossils of the Burgess Shales is that they are found between two layers of shale. This leaves a flattened, reflective film in the rock layers. Think of them as a two-dimensional black and white photograph of an ancient creature. This means that each fossil may represent an image of a different angle or aspect of the animal and thus reveal details not visible in earlier samples. It's this constant evolution of understanding that helps fossils to eventually be classified in a much more exacting way. At a minimum, palaeontologists need to see fossils samples that show the side, top, and front views in order to begin to get a better idea of the structure. As new fossils reveal new details, scientists get a deeper understanding of how the animal fits within classic scientific categories. Charles Walcott knew that Habelia was an arthropod, but he didn't have enough information to pin down where it fit within this huge group of animals. Arthropods are one of So, what would you be willing to endure to make it home for Christmas In these modern times? These days trips home usually involve expensive plane fares or long drives on winter roads made safer by winter tires, interior heaters, and modern clothing. What if you were faced with a 112 km snowshoe trek on an unbroken trail in a blizzard - you know, just like your parents told you what it was like to walk to school in the days of yore! Well, Tom Wilson was more than just a mountain man. He was the personal assistant of "Hells Bells Rogers" during his railroad surveys through the Rockies and later started the first guiding operation in the mountains. In December of 1904, Tom was determined to be home for Christmas dinner with his family. His route began at Kootenay Plains where he had his horse ranch. Today it's located along the David Thompson Highway east of the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Alberta. His route would have followed the Siffleur River Valley up and over Pipestone Pass. He then followed the Pipestone River towards its confluence with the Bow River, and then followed the Bow into Banff. He wasn't the first to follow that route. In August of 1859, James Hector of the Palliser Expedition had passed this way. He wrote in his journal: "After camping to the south of the pass, “…opposite to a waterfall which forms the source of Pipe Stone Creek, and where the stream leaps and rushes down a gutter-like channel, from a height of 450 feet,” they set out to, “ascend to the height of land by a steep rocky path that led at some places close by snow that was still lying from last winter. After five miles we got above the woods, and passed over a fine sloping prairie, with big bald mountains on either side. Plants with esculent roots were very abundant here, and many parts of the sward looked as if it had been ploughed, where the bears had been rooting them up like pigs….Two miles further we passed over a bleak bare “divide,” where there was no vegetation, and elevated about 2000 feet above last night’s encampment.” Others had also passed that way. They included Normal Collie, Hugh Stutfield, and Herman Wooley in 1898 as they headed north on an expedition that saw them discovering the Columbia Icefields. Just a few months after Hector had passed through, the Earl of Southesk, James Carnegie, also traversed the pass. These men were all seasoned travellers, but none of them attempted the route in winter. Tom, like all of his contemporaries, would have been kitted out in heavy woolen clothing with leather boots and snowshoes. Here is how Tom described his experience in a letter to pioneer surveyor and founder of the Alpine Club, A. O. Wheeler: "There is not much to tell of my trip over the Pipestone Pass. It was simply the case of a man starting on a seventy-mile snowshoe trip across the mountains to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family, and getting there and eating dinner, the pleasure being well worth the trip. I rode to within eight miles of the summit and started early the next morning on snowshoes to cross the pass (8,300 feet). It was snowing a little and very cold when I started and when I got opposite the Clearwater Gap, a blizzard came up. I could not see more than six or eight feet ahead in that grey snow light that makes everything look level. I was on the trail alongside a mountainside, and was afraid of falling down into one of those steep side collars (which you remember on that side), and of breaking my snowshoes, so I turned and went down the mountain to the creek bottom. The snow was seven or eight feet deep and I fell through a snow bridge, getting both feet wet. It was below zero and a long way up to timber whichever way I turned, but I'd never liked hitting the back trail. It was eight o'clock at night before I crossed the summit of the pass and reached the first timber. I got a fire started, but it was drifting and snowing so hard that the snow covered my socks and moccasins as fast as I could wring (sic) them dry, and, owing to the fierce wind, the flames leap in every direction , making it impossible to get near the fire, so at half past nine I gave it up, put on my wet foot gear and snowshoes and started down the valley. I could not see and felt my way with a stick. By daylight I had made three and a half miles; not much, but it kept the circulation going. In the heavy timber I made a fire and dried out. My feet were beginning to pain as they had been thawed out twice already. I made three miles more that day and finished the last of my grub. The big snowshoes sank fifteen inches in the soft new snow and were a big drag on my frozen toes. I saw it meant three or four more days tramping without grub to make Laggan. I made it in three, but the last day I could only make about fifty yards without resting, and my tracks did not leave a very straight line. The chief trouble I had was to keep from going to sleep; it would have been so much easier to quit than to go on. " Wheeler tried to bring some clarity to Tom's adventure. He wrote: "Think for a moment what it really meant; that every time he put on his snowshoes, his toes got frozen owing to the tight shoe straps; that every time he took them off, his feet had to be thawed out; that every step had to raise a load of ten to fifteen pound of soft snow; that wood had to be collected and cut to keep alive during the night; that the fierce pain would drive away sleep; that he had no food, and always before him those interminable, slow, dragging miles of snowy wilderness. It must have required iron determination to make it to the end of the never-ending track, to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family. " Like any winter backcountry traveller that has suffered from frostbite, Tom made his way to see Dr. Brett, Banff's resident physician. He is rumoured to have stated: "I hope I won't have to loose (sic) them Doc. I've hade (sic) 'em a long time and I'm sort of used to 'em." Tom was very lucky. He did lose several toes on each foot but he liked to joke that since the doc had removed the same number on each foot, he was still well balanced. I want to thank Roger Patillo for sharing this story in his book The Canadian Rockies Pioneers, Legends and True Tales. Click the title of the book if you'd like to purchase a copy.  Tom was one of many early and modern mountain wanderers to lose toes to frostbite. Even today, it is a real danger for people out on snowshoes, as well as backcountry and cross-country skis. Always plan for changes in weather and remember, unlike Tom, you can always turn back if conditions change for the worse. Are wolves returning to the Bow Valley? The Bow River valley has not been a good home for wolves. Over the years, pack after pack has become established only to gradually get whittled away by vehicle and train impacts, and more recently, human food conditioning. The summer of 2016 was particularly bad for the Bow Valley wolf pack. The summer began on a very high note its 5 adults being joined by 6 new pups making for a total of 11 wolves in the pack. Unfortunately, this situation changed for the worse with four of the pups killed in two separate incidents with trains. The alpha female and another young female were both shot by Park Wardens after becoming accustomed to handouts from campers in the Two Jack Lake Campground. By the end of the season, none of the pups had survived. In a separate incident, one of the remaining wolves was shot by a hunter in B.C. By 2017, there were only two wolves remaining and they dispersed. As of Sept 2017, the alpha male had joined a pack in the southern part of Banff known as the Spray Pack. The surviving female had joined another male and possibly moved out of the area. Paul Paquette is a well-respected biologist who headed the largest wolf study ever undertaken in the Bow Valley. In recent years he was quoted as stating the following about the challenges for wolves in the Bow River valley: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” We are in a constant battle with developers and the town to try to make sure that we can keep wildlife like wolves and grizzly bears on the landscape. Recently, there seems to be a reason for cautious optimism. The Bow Valley is great habitat for wolves when you consider the high numbers of potential prey animals available to them. In a recent interview on CBC, Jesse Whittington, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada stated: "We're curious about what's going to happen," said Whittington. "Either the old male and the pack from the Spray could move back into the Bow Valley, or one of the neighbouring packs might slide in." In October of 2017, three wolves were spotted west of Banff near Castle Mountain. These were previously unknown wolves that may be looking for a new place to call home. As Jesse Whittington stated in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook: "If you have a male and female who hook-up and have pups, all of a sudden you could have a pack of seven wolves, and if those pups survive and have pups again, you get a pretty large pack" The Bow Valley has not been kind to its wolves, but we still need them. They play a key role in keeping elk and deer populations in check. It's too easy to look at Banff today and point out the world-class wildlife crossings along the highway and assume that wolves will have an easy time coexisting with people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The section of highway that is fenced is primarily through Banff and a little to the east and west.  Wolves cover vast ranges and the crossing structures only protect them in a small part of their range. The train tracks and Bow Valley Parkway also remain unfenced. Just this past November, two wolves were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. It was trains that killed 4 of the pack's cubs in 2016. Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have been conducting ongoing research around the idea of fencing and other wildlife warning systems in areas of highest danger. We also have rampant development in areas like Canmore which can hamper movement through the valley to the east and south into Kananaskis and beyond. And finally, we have the challenge of people on the landscape. More than 90% of the use of our designated wildlife corridors in and around Canmore was by people. If the corridors are viewed as just another recreational trail, then eventually, the wildlife will simply avoid the corridor altogether. In the past, we've been lucky enough to have several wolf packs adjacent to the Bow Valley, for instance in the Cascade and Spray Valleys, but the Bow Valley Pack has come and gone repeatedly due to the many hazards that face them when they arrive in the valley. Let's keep our fingers crossed that these wolves do stick around. We need to do our part to make sure they have the best possible opportunity to survive and thrive. Here are a few things that we can do to help keep our wolves safe: Slow down on highways like the Trans-Canada, Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 40, and Spray Lakes Road Never ever feed wildlife or stand idly by while other people offer food. Keep your distance. Moving ever closer for that selfie puts your life, and the life of the animal, at risk. Obey trail closures. They are there for a reason. If we all make a point of doing what we can to keep wildlife safe and help to educate visitors who may not be aware of the consequences of their actions, then we may be able to help keep wolves on the landscape. Next up 10 New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks The mountains are more than just a place to hike, bike and explore. They are home to 53 species of mammals, 260 species of birds, 996 species of vascular plants, 407 lichens, 243 mosses, and 53 liverworts (source: http://canadianparks.com/alberta/banffnp/page3.html). There are also almost 90 species of fungi in the mountain parks (source: http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/11896.pdf). Everything we do in the mountains has an impact and here are some resolutions that will help you to better appreciate this beautiful place. Explore less busy sites. More than 95% of visitation to the mountain parks visits the same 2 or 3% of the park, essentially the paved corridors. Many of the attractions along these roads are in serious need of upgrades to help prevent the masses of tourists from creating permanent damage. Quiet Times are the Best Times. If you really want to get the experience that you saw on the brochure, get an alarm clock. The sun comes up early in the mountains during the summer months. If you're on the shores of Lake Louise or Moraine Lake at 6 am, you'll likely have the view all to yourself…and don't tell anybody, but those two sites are best when the sun first hits the mountains. Don't forget the evening though as well. Once the hordes head back to their hotels, the landscape quiets down again and you can have that great experience. Keep track of your sightings. If you see something exciting like a grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, or wolverine - report it. Park managers are always looking to keep tabs on wildlife and sightings helps to add another data point to their wildlife research. Support organizations like the Friends of Kananaskis and Friends of Jasper. These not for profit groups do an amazing job in helping to raise awareness of park issues, run educational programs, offer volunteer opportunities to make a difference on the ground and even operate gift shops and other facilities designed to raise money for their ongoing operation. Read a good book. Our connection to our sense of place always improves with knowledge and understanding. What once was an unknown wilderness suddenly becomes a community of plants, animals, birds, and other living beings - each with an important role to play in the maintenance of the community. Every book that helps you to understand the place you call home can only enhance your ability to feel an even stronger connection to that place. Meet your neighbours. The next time you walk one of the local trails, take the time to learn the story of one new plant, animal, bird, or other residents of the mountain landscape. I say "learn the story", because each one is much more than just their name. Why are they there? What role do they play? What's the coolest thing about them? As you repeat this process, the mountain landscape becomes much more familiar and ever more welcoming as you look forward to the acquaintances you've made and begin to mark the seasons by the comings and goings of old friends. Start up a neighbourhood watch. By this I mean keep an eye on your mountain community and look for changes. Are there new plants on the landscape that weren't there in the past? New birds? Changes in the community often reflect changes in the environment. Every resident of a particular community is there because that habitat offers all the essential requirements they need to survive. Plants need the right amount of moisture, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and perhaps even a particular neighbour with whom they have a dependent relationship. Every plant will have a different list of needs, as will every bird and animal. A small change to the ecology will be reflected in changes to the individual plants and animals in that community. Simply sit down. We hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski, and snowshoe along the mountain trails season after season and year after year. Sometimes, the best experience can be had by simply sitting quietly and absorbing everything that's around you. Take off your shoes and socks (in the summer of course), and feel connected to the landscape. Listen to the sounds. Can you recognize all the birds around you? Watch the fish rising in the water to eat insects hatching on the surface. Smell the air. Are their particular smells that spark a memory? Smell is the sense most tied to memory and often a strong smell will instantly transport you to a particular place or time in your personal history. For me, the pungent sweet smell of wolf willow represents the smell of home. Talk to a senior. Our sense of place is more than just learning the natural history. To understand the natural history, we also have to understand the ways that people have interacted with it in the past. Somebody that's been on the land for 50 years can share insights that only come with the passing of the years and the experiences that those years brought. The elders are the keepers of the stories. They are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and time spent talking with elders about their lifetime of adventures and understanding will always help guide you to a new appreciation of the world around you. Be a tourist now and then. Take a tour. Visit a museum or attraction. Fly in a helicopter. Often, we learn more about places we visit then we do about our own backyard. Make a point of seeing the mountains like visitors see them. Spending time with people that are seeing the Rockies for the first time is one of the things that I love the most about being a guide. Every tourist sees something different. They bring a new perspective born of a lifetime of experiences in their past. I'm constantly guided towards new perspectives simply because they are looking at a scene with fresh eyes. Why not make 2018 a year where we commit to understanding and connecting to the mountain landscape around us? If at the end of the year, you've learned a few new plants, or birds, or animals, and how they both benefit and are benefitting other members of the community, then you will have started on an exciting role that will deepen your personal sense of place. I hope to see you out there. Next up, what determines success when bears are relocated outside of their home range? Success of Relocating Grizzly Bears This past summer, people were stunned when Bear 148 was moved far from her home range. Unfortunately, she subsequently wandered across the British Columbia border and was legally shot by a hunter. The media covered this story extensively and in many cases used the wrong terminology. When wildlife managers move a bear to an area within its current home range, we call it relocating the bear. This term refers to moving a bear simply to another area that is still within its territory and within which it can comfortably survive. In cases, such as with 148, where the bear is moved far from its home range, the preferred term is translocated. This means that the bear is moved to completely unfamiliar territory where it doesn't know the seasonal food patterns or their locations. It doesn't know the landscape and it doesn't know the other resident bears into whose territory it has just been placed. As you can imagine, this puts the bear in a very high-risk situation, but just how high risk? What are its chances of surviving so far from its home range? This is one area of study that has been largely neglected until recently. There really had not been any peer-reviewed analyses of the factors that affected survival when a bear was translocated. An article published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management evaluated 110 different grizzly translocations within the Alberta Rockies and looked to determine what factors impacted successful movements and looked for ways to increase the success of future translocations. Biologist Sarah Milligan and her fellow researchers defined a successful translocation as one that required no additional management intervention and showed the bear surviving one entire year without returning to its home range. It's well known that the odds are not in favour of the non-resident bear when it is moved to unfamiliar territory. Of the 110 translocations examined, a full 70% were failures. A 30% success rate is still much higher than generally reported in the media. Translocations are never popular, but unfortunately, with some bears, the only other alternative is to shoot it. Conservation officers never make the decision to move a bear lightly. They know the dangers that it will face in its new home but their first priority is the safety of the community. While Bear 148 never injured anyone, it got to the point where conservation officers simply had to make the difficult decision to move her. In order to determine the success of bears in new habitats, biologists needed to better understand how bears currently living in the area use the landscape. Researchers tagged resident bears to learn how they used the landscape, feeding habits, and denning areas. Alberta also has a long history of monitoring bear movement with satellite and radio collars and this historical data is also helpful in studies like this one. One of the biggest challenges with translocating bears is their homing instinct. Many bears will simply abandon their new homes and travel back towards their home range. It is for this reason that Bear 148 was moved north of Jasper National Park. The further the movement, the lower the likelihood that the bear will return home. The quality of the habitat into which a bear is released can also have a strong bearing on reducing the homing instinct. Ideally, the release location should match, as much as possible, the home range in terms of available foods, movement corridors, and denning sites. The study found that the success rate was highest if bears were moved as early as possible in the season. Unfortunately, in many cases, the highest potential for human-grizzly conflicts occurs during buffaloberry season between mid-July and mid-September. Translocated bears also tended to have ranges some 3.25 times larger than resident bears. This shows they needed to cover more territory in order to find sufficient forage to survive. This is likely connected to their being unfamiliar with the landscape. While their home ranges did decrease over time, they continued to be larger than resident bears. Of the translocations that were considered failures, the primary causes were homing, new incidents of conflict, and mortality. Of the 77 failed translocations, 28 bears were killed because of management actions, and 30 failed due to homing. Bears translocated more than 200 km reduced the odds of homing by 95%. When it comes to the timing of winter denning, the study showed no significant difference between resident and translocated bears. The study concluded: "Repeated conflict and mortality were the greatest causes of translocation failure. Our results suggest that the most important factors for translocation success are the level of human-caused mortality risk at the release site and the time of year when the translocation occurred. Specifically, we found that the odds of translocation success decreased with increasing levels of mortality risk surrounding the release site. This result is likely related to the large post-release movements that are typical of many wide-ranging species, which can bring individuals near areas of conflict or mortality risk." Translocation remains an important management tool. Studies like this one help wildlife officers to make the best decisions to increase the opportunities for a successful movement. It's never an easy decision to move an animal away from its home range but the more we understand ways to increase their chances of success, the more the pendulum can move towards reduced mortality. In the central Rockies, people are the biggest problem. We need to work harder to coexist with bears and to respect closures. When people violate closures, it's always the bears that pay the price. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for snowshoe, nature, hiking, and photography guides across the mountain west. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep054 for links to additional information. You can also comment on the stories and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go snowshoeing. I'll talk to you next week.

So, what would you be willing to endure to make it home for Christmas In these modern times? These days trips home usually involve expensive plane fares or long drives on winter roads made safer by winter tires, interior heaters, and modern clothing. What if you were faced with a 112 km snowshoe trek on an unbroken trail in a blizzard - you know, just like your parents told you what it was like to walk to school in the days of yore! Well, Tom Wilson was more than just a mountain man. He was the personal assistant of "Hells Bells Rogers" during his railroad surveys through the Rockies and later started the first guiding operation in the mountains. In December of 1904, Tom was determined to be home for Christmas dinner with his family. His route began at Kootenay Plains where he had his horse ranch. Today it's located along the David Thompson Highway east of the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Alberta. His route would have followed the Siffleur River Valley up and over Pipestone Pass. He then followed the Pipestone River towards its confluence with the Bow River, and then followed the Bow into Banff. He wasn't the first to follow that route. In August of 1859, James Hector of the Palliser Expedition had passed this way. He wrote in his journal: "After camping to the south of the pass, “…opposite to a waterfall which forms the source of Pipe Stone Creek, and where the stream leaps and rushes down a gutter-like channel, from a height of 450 feet,” they set out to, “ascend to the height of land by a steep rocky path that led at some places close by snow that was still lying from last winter. After five miles we got above the woods, and passed over a fine sloping prairie, with big bald mountains on either side. Plants with esculent roots were very abundant here, and many parts of the sward looked as if it had been ploughed, where the bears had been rooting them up like pigs….Two miles further we passed over a bleak bare “divide,” where there was no vegetation, and elevated about 2000 feet above last night’s encampment.” Others had also passed that way. They included Normal Collie, Hugh Stutfield, and Herman Wooley in 1898 as they headed north on an expedition that saw them discovering the Columbia Icefields. Just a few months after Hector had passed through, the Earl of Southesk, James Carnegie, also traversed the pass. These men were all seasoned travellers, but none of them attempted the route in winter. Tom, like all of his contemporaries, would have been kitted out in heavy woolen clothing with leather boots and snowshoes. Here is how Tom described his experience in a letter to pioneer surveyor and founder of the Alpine Club, A. O. Wheeler: "There is not much to tell of my trip over the Pipestone Pass. It was simply the case of a man starting on a seventy-mile snowshoe trip across the mountains to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family, and getting there and eating dinner, the pleasure being well worth the trip. I rode to within eight miles of the summit and started early the next morning on snowshoes to cross the pass (8,300 feet). It was snowing a little and very cold when I started and when I got opposite the Clearwater Gap, a blizzard came up. I could not see more than six or eight feet ahead in that grey snow light that makes everything look level. I was on the trail alongside a mountainside, and was afraid of falling down into one of those steep side collars (which you remember on that side), and of breaking my snowshoes, so I turned and went down the mountain to the creek bottom. The snow was seven or eight feet deep and I fell through a snow bridge, getting both feet wet. It was below zero and a long way up to timber whichever way I turned, but I'd never liked hitting the back trail. It was eight o'clock at night before I crossed the summit of the pass and reached the first timber. I got a fire started, but it was drifting and snowing so hard that the snow covered my socks and moccasins as fast as I could wring (sic) them dry, and, owing to the fierce wind, the flames leap in every direction , making it impossible to get near the fire, so at half past nine I gave it up, put on my wet foot gear and snowshoes and started down the valley. I could not see and felt my way with a stick. By daylight I had made three and a half miles; not much, but it kept the circulation going. In the heavy timber I made a fire and dried out. My feet were beginning to pain as they had been thawed out twice already. I made three miles more that day and finished the last of my grub. The big snowshoes sank fifteen inches in the soft new snow and were a big drag on my frozen toes. I saw it meant three or four more days tramping without grub to make Laggan. I made it in three, but the last day I could only make about fifty yards without resting, and my tracks did not leave a very straight line. The chief trouble I had was to keep from going to sleep; it would have been so much easier to quit than to go on. " Wheeler tried to bring some clarity to Tom's adventure. He wrote: "Think for a moment what it really meant; that every time he put on his snowshoes, his toes got frozen owing to the tight shoe straps; that every time he took them off, his feet had to be thawed out; that every step had to raise a load of ten to fifteen pound of soft snow; that wood had to be collected and cut to keep alive during the night; that the fierce pain would drive away sleep; that he had no food, and always before him those interminable, slow, dragging miles of snowy wilderness. It must have required iron determination to make it to the end of the never-ending track, to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family. " Like any winter backcountry traveller that has suffered from frostbite, Tom made his way to see Dr. Brett, Banff's resident physician. He is rumoured to have stated: "I hope I won't have to loose (sic) them Doc. I've hade (sic) 'em a long time and I'm sort of used to 'em." Tom was very lucky. He did lose several toes on each foot but he liked to joke that since the doc had removed the same number on each foot, he was still well balanced. I want to thank Roger Patillo for sharing this story in his book The Canadian Rockies Pioneers, Legends and True Tales. Click the title of the book if you'd like to purchase a copy.  Tom was one of many early and modern mountain wanderers to lose toes to frostbite. Even today, it is a real danger for people out on snowshoes, as well as backcountry and cross-country skis. Always plan for changes in weather and remember, unlike Tom, you can always turn back if conditions change for the worse. Are wolves returning to the Bow Valley? The Bow River valley has not been a good home for wolves. Over the years, pack after pack has become established only to gradually get whittled away by vehicle and train impacts, and more recently, human food conditioning. The summer of 2016 was particularly bad for the Bow Valley wolf pack. The summer began on a very high note its 5 adults being joined by 6 new pups making for a total of 11 wolves in the pack. Unfortunately, this situation changed for the worse with four of the pups killed in two separate incidents with trains. The alpha female and another young female were both shot by Park Wardens after becoming accustomed to handouts from campers in the Two Jack Lake Campground. By the end of the season, none of the pups had survived. In a separate incident, one of the remaining wolves was shot by a hunter in B.C. By 2017, there were only two wolves remaining and they dispersed. As of Sept 2017, the alpha male had joined a pack in the southern part of Banff known as the Spray Pack. The surviving female had joined another male and possibly moved out of the area. Paul Paquette is a well-respected biologist who headed the largest wolf study ever undertaken in the Bow Valley. In recent years he was quoted as stating the following about the challenges for wolves in the Bow River valley: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” We are in a constant battle with developers and the town to try to make sure that we can keep wildlife like wolves and grizzly bears on the landscape. Recently, there seems to be a reason for cautious optimism. The Bow Valley is great habitat for wolves when you consider the high numbers of potential prey animals available to them. In a recent interview on CBC, Jesse Whittington, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada stated: "We're curious about what's going to happen," said Whittington. "Either the old male and the pack from the Spray could move back into the Bow Valley, or one of the neighbouring packs might slide in." In October of 2017, three wolves were spotted west of Banff near Castle Mountain. These were previously unknown wolves that may be looking for a new place to call home. As Jesse Whittington stated in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook: "If you have a male and female who hook-up and have pups, all of a sudden you could have a pack of seven wolves, and if those pups survive and have pups again, you get a pretty large pack" The Bow Valley has not been kind to its wolves, but we still need them. They play a key role in keeping elk and deer populations in check. It's too easy to look at Banff today and point out the world-class wildlife crossings along the highway and assume that wolves will have an easy time coexisting with people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The section of highway that is fenced is primarily through Banff and a little to the east and west.  Wolves cover vast ranges and the crossing structures only protect them in a small part of their range. The train tracks and Bow Valley Parkway also remain unfenced. Just this past November, two wolves were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. It was trains that killed 4 of the pack's cubs in 2016. Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have been conducting ongoing research around the idea of fencing and other wildlife warning systems in areas of highest danger. We also have rampant development in areas like Canmore which can hamper movement through the valley to the east and south into Kananaskis and beyond. And finally, we have the challenge of people on the landscape. More than 90% of the use of our designated wildlife corridors in and around Canmore was by people. If the corridors are viewed as just another recreational trail, then eventually, the wildlife will simply avoid the corridor altogether. In the past, we've been lucky enough to have several wolf packs adjacent to the Bow Valley, for instance in the Cascade and Spray Valleys, but the Bow Valley Pack has come and gone repeatedly due to the many hazards that face them when they arrive in the valley. Let's keep our fingers crossed that these wolves do stick around. We need to do our part to make sure they have the best possible opportunity to survive and thrive. Here are a few things that we can do to help keep our wolves safe: Slow down on highways like the Trans-Canada, Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 40, and Spray Lakes Road Never ever feed wildlife or stand idly by while other people offer food. Keep your distance. Moving ever closer for that selfie puts your life, and the life of the animal, at risk. Obey trail closures. They are there for a reason. If we all make a point of doing what we can to keep wildlife safe and help to educate visitors who may not be aware of the consequences of their actions, then we may be able to help keep wolves on the landscape. Next up 10 New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks The mountains are more than just a place to hike, bike and explore. They are home to 53 species of mammals, 260 species of birds, 996 species of vascular plants, 407 lichens, 243 mosses, and 53 liverworts (source: http://canadianparks.com/alberta/banffnp/page3.html). There are also almost 90 species of fungi in the mountain parks (source: http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/11896.pdf). Everything we do in the mountains has an impact and here are some resolutions that will help you to better appreciate this beautiful place. Explore less busy sites. More than 95% of visitation to the mountain parks visits the same 2 or 3% of the park, essentially the paved corridors. Many of the attractions along these roads are in serious need of upgrades to help prevent the masses of tourists from creating permanent damage. Quiet Times are the Best Times. If you really want to get the experience that you saw on the brochure, get an alarm clock. The sun comes up early in the mountains during the summer months. If you're on the shores of Lake Louise or Moraine Lake at 6 am, you'll likely have the view all to yourself…and don't tell anybody, but those two sites are best when the sun first hits the mountains. Don't forget the evening though as well. Once the hordes head back to their hotels, the landscape quiets down again and you can have that great experience. Keep track of your sightings. If you see something exciting like a grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, or wolverine - report it. Park managers are always looking to keep tabs on wildlife and sightings helps to add another data point to their wildlife research. Support organizations like the Friends of Kananaskis and Friends of Jasper. These not for profit groups do an amazing job in helping to raise awareness of park issues, run educational programs, offer volunteer opportunities to make a difference on the ground and even operate gift shops and other facilities designed to raise money for their ongoing operation. Read a good book. Our connection to our sense of place always improves with knowledge and understanding. What once was an unknown wilderness suddenly becomes a community of plants, animals, birds, and other living beings - each with an important role to play in the maintenance of the community. Every book that helps you to understand the place you call home can only enhance your ability to feel an even stronger connection to that place. Meet your neighbours. The next time you walk one of the local trails, take the time to learn the story of one new plant, animal, bird, or other residents of the mountain landscape. I say "learn the story", because each one is much more than just their name. Why are they there? What role do they play? What's the coolest thing about them? As you repeat this process, the mountain landscape becomes much more familiar and ever more welcoming as you look forward to the acquaintances you've made and begin to mark the seasons by the comings and goings of old friends. Start up a neighbourhood watch. By this I mean keep an eye on your mountain community and look for changes. Are there new plants on the landscape that weren't there in the past? New birds? Changes in the community often reflect changes in the environment. Every resident of a particular community is there because that habitat offers all the essential requirements they need to survive. Plants need the right amount of moisture, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and perhaps even a particular neighbour with whom they have a dependent relationship. Every plant will have a different list of needs, as will every bird and animal. A small change to the ecology will be reflected in changes to the individual plants and animals in that community. Simply sit down. We hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski, and snowshoe along the mountain trails season after season and year after year. Sometimes, the best experience can be had by simply sitting quietly and absorbing everything that's around you. Take off your shoes and socks (in the summer of course), and feel connected to the landscape. Listen to the sounds. Can you recognize all the birds around you? Watch the fish rising in the water to eat insects hatching on the surface. Smell the air. Are their particular smells that spark a memory? Smell is the sense most tied to memory and often a strong smell will instantly transport you to a particular place or time in your personal history. For me, the pungent sweet smell of wolf willow represents the smell of home. Talk to a senior. Our sense of place is more than just learning the natural history. To understand the natural history, we also have to understand the ways that people have interacted with it in the past. Somebody that's been on the land for 50 years can share insights that only come with the passing of the years and the experiences that those years brought. The elders are the keepers of the stories. They are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and time spent talking with elders about their lifetime of adventures and understanding will always help guide you to a new appreciation of the world around you. Be a tourist now and then. Take a tour. Visit a museum or attraction. Fly in a helicopter. Often, we learn more about places we visit then we do about our own backyard. Make a point of seeing the mountains like visitors see them. Spending time with people that are seeing the Rockies for the first time is one of the things that I love the most about being a guide. Every tourist sees something different. They bring a new perspective born of a lifetime of experiences in their past. I'm constantly guided towards new perspectives simply because they are looking at a scene with fresh eyes. Why not make 2018 a year where we commit to understanding and connecting to the mountain landscape around us? If at the end of the year, you've learned a few new plants, or birds, or animals, and how they both benefit and are benefitting other members of the community, then you will have started on an exciting role that will deepen your personal sense of place. I hope to see you out there. Next up, what determines success when bears are relocated outside of their home range? Success of Relocating Grizzly Bears This past summer, people were stunned when Bear 148 was moved far from her home range. Unfortunately, she subsequently wandered across the British Columbia border and was legally shot by a hunter. The media covered this story extensively and in many cases used the wrong terminology. When wildlife managers move a bear to an area within its current home range, we call it relocating the bear. This term refers to moving a bear simply to another area that is still within its territory and within which it can comfortably survive. In cases, such as with 148, where the bear is moved far from its home range, the preferred term is translocated. This means that the bear is moved to completely unfamiliar territory where it doesn't know the seasonal food patterns or their locations. It doesn't know the landscape and it doesn't know the other resident bears into whose territory it has just been placed. As you can imagine, this puts the bear in a very high-risk situation, but just how high risk? What are its chances of surviving so far from its home range? This is one area of study that has been largely neglected until recently. There really had not been any peer-reviewed analyses of the factors that affected survival when a bear was translocated. An article published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management evaluated 110 different grizzly translocations within the Alberta Rockies and looked to determine what factors impacted successful movements and looked for ways to increase the success of future translocations. Biologist Sarah Milligan and her fellow researchers defined a successful translocation as one that required no additional management intervention and showed the bear surviving one entire year without returning to its home range. It's well known that the odds are not in favour of the non-resident bear when it is moved to unfamiliar territory. Of the 110 translocations examined, a full 70% were failures. A 30% success rate is still much higher than generally reported in the media. Translocations are never popular, but unfortunately, with some bears, the only other alternative is to shoot it. Conservation officers never make the decision to move a bear lightly. They know the dangers that it will face in its new home but their first priority is the safety of the community. While Bear 148 never injured anyone, it got to the point where conservation officers simply had to make the difficult decision to move her. In order to determine the success of bears in new habitats, biologists needed to better understand how bears currently living in the area use the landscape. Researchers tagged resident bears to learn how they used the landscape, feeding habits, and denning areas. Alberta also has a long history of monitoring bear movement with satellite and radio collars and this historical data is also helpful in studies like this one. One of the biggest challenges with translocating bears is their homing instinct. Many bears will simply abandon their new homes and travel back towards their home range. It is for this reason that Bear 148 was moved north of Jasper National Park. The further the movement, the lower the likelihood that the bear will return home. The quality of the habitat into which a bear is released can also have a strong bearing on reducing the homing instinct. Ideally, the release location should match, as much as possible, the home range in terms of available foods, movement corridors, and denning sites. The study found that the success rate was highest if bears were moved as early as possible in the season. Unfortunately, in many cases, the highest potential for human-grizzly conflicts occurs during buffaloberry season between mid-July and mid-September. Translocated bears also tended to have ranges some 3.25 times larger than resident bears. This shows they needed to cover more territory in order to find sufficient forage to survive. This is likely connected to their being unfamiliar with the landscape. While their home ranges did decrease over time, they continued to be larger than resident bears. Of the translocations that were considered failures, the primary causes were homing, new incidents of conflict, and mortality. Of the 77 failed translocations, 28 bears were killed because of management actions, and 30 failed due to homing. Bears translocated more than 200 km reduced the odds of homing by 95%. When it comes to the timing of winter denning, the study showed no significant difference between resident and translocated bears. The study concluded: "Repeated conflict and mortality were the greatest causes of translocation failure. Our results suggest that the most important factors for translocation success are the level of human-caused mortality risk at the release site and the time of year when the translocation occurred. Specifically, we found that the odds of translocation success decreased with increasing levels of mortality risk surrounding the release site. This result is likely related to the large post-release movements that are typical of many wide-ranging species, which can bring individuals near areas of conflict or mortality risk." Translocation remains an important management tool. Studies like this one help wildlife officers to make the best decisions to increase the opportunities for a successful movement. It's never an easy decision to move an animal away from its home range but the more we understand ways to increase their chances of success, the more the pendulum can move towards reduced mortality. In the central Rockies, people are the biggest problem. We need to work harder to coexist with bears and to respect closures. When people violate closures, it's always the bears that pay the price. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for snowshoe, nature, hiking, and photography guides across the mountain west. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep054 for links to additional information. You can also comment on the stories and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go snowshoeing. I'll talk to you next week.

Home for Christmas - Tom Wilson has a close call So, what would you be willing to endure to make it home for Christmas In these modern times? These days trips home usually involve expensive plane fares or long drives on winter roads made safer by winter tires, interior heaters, and modern clothing. What if you were faced with a 112 km snowshoe trek on an unbroken trail in a blizzard - you know, just like your parents told you what it was like to walk to school in the days of yore! Well, Tom Wilson was more than just a mountain man. He was the personal assistant of "Hells Bells Rogers" during his railroad surveys through the Rockies and later started the first guiding operation in the mountains. In December of 1904, Tom was determined to be home for Christmas dinner with his family. His route began at Kootenay Plains where he had his horse ranch. Today it's located along the David Thompson Highway east of the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Alberta. His route would have followed the Siffleur River Valley up and over Pipestone Pass. He then followed the Pipestone River towards its confluence with the Bow River, and then followed the Bow into Banff. He wasn't the first to follow that route. In August of 1859, James Hector of the Palliser Expedition had passed this way. He wrote in his journal: "After camping to the south of the pass, “…opposite to a waterfall which forms the source of Pipe Stone Creek, and where the stream leaps and rushes down a gutter-like channel, from a height of 450 feet,” they set out to, “ascend to the height of land by a steep rocky path that led at some places close by snow that was still lying from last winter. After five miles we got above the woods, and passed over a fine sloping prairie, with big bald mountains on either side. Plants with esculent roots were very abundant here, and many parts of the sward looked as if it had been ploughed, where the bears had been rooting them up like pigs….Two miles further we passed over a bleak bare “divide,” where there was no vegetation, and elevated about 2000 feet above last night’s encampment.” Others had also passed that way. They included Normal Collie, Hugh Stutfield, and Herman Wooley in 1898 as they headed north on an expedition that saw them discovering the Columbia Icefields. Just a few months after Hector had passed through, the Earl of Southesk, James Carnegie, also traversed the pass. These men were all seasoned travellers, but none of them attempted the route in winter. Tom, like all of his contemporaries, would have been kitted out in heavy woolen clothing with leather boots and snowshoes. Here is how Tom described his experience in a letter to pioneer surveyor and founder of the Alpine Club, A. O. Wheeler: "There is not much to tell of my trip over the Pipestone Pass. It was simply the case of a man starting on a seventy-mile snowshoe trip across the mountains to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family, and getting there and eating dinner, the pleasure being well worth the trip. I rode to within eight miles of the summit and started early the next morning on snowshoes to cross the pass (8,300 feet). It was snowing a little and very cold when I started and when I got opposite the Clearwater Gap, a blizzard came up. I could not see more than six or eight feet ahead in that grey snow light that makes everything look level. I was on the trail alongside a mountainside, and was afraid of falling down into one of those steep side collars (which you remember on that side), and of breaking my snowshoes, so I turned and went down the mountain to the creek bottom. The snow was seven or eight feet deep and I fell through a snow bridge, getting both feet wet. It was below zero and a long way up to timber whichever way I turned, but I'd never liked hitting the back trail. It was eight o'clock at night before I crossed the summit of the pass and reached the first timber. I got a fire started, but it was drifting and snowing so hard that the snow covered my socks and moccasins as fast as I could wring (sic) them dry, and, owing to the fierce wind, the flames leap in every direction , making it impossible to get near the fire, so at half past nine I gave it up, put on my wet foot gear and snowshoes and started down the valley. I could not see and felt my way with a stick. By daylight I had made three and a half miles; not much, but it kept the circulation going. In the heavy timber I made a fire and dried out. My feet were beginning to pain as they had been thawed out twice already. I made three miles more that day and finished the last of my grub. The big snowshoes sank fifteen inches in the soft new snow and were a big drag on my frozen toes. I saw it meant three or four more days tramping without grub to make Laggan. I made it in three, but the last day I could only make about fifty yards without resting, and my tracks did not leave a very straight line. The chief trouble I had was to keep from going to sleep; it would have been so much easier to quit than to go on. " Wheeler tried to bring some clarity to Tom's adventure. He wrote: "Think for a moment what it really meant; that every time he put on his snowshoes, his toes got frozen owing to the tight shoe straps; that every time he took them off, his feet had to be thawed out; that every step had to raise a load of ten to fifteen pound of soft snow; that wood had to be collected and cut to keep alive during the night; that the fierce pain would drive away sleep; that he had no food, and always before him those interminable, slow, dragging miles of snowy wilderness. It must have required iron determination to make it to the end of the never-ending track, to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife and family. " Like any winter backcountry traveller that has suffered from frostbite, Tom made his way to see Dr. Brett, Banff's resident physician. He is rumoured to have stated: "I hope I won't have to loose (sic) them Doc. I've hade (sic) 'em a long time and I'm sort of used to 'em." Tom was very lucky. He did lose several toes on each foot but he liked to joke that since the doc had removed the same number on each foot, he was still well balanced. I want to thank Roger Patillo for sharing this story in his book The Canadian Rockies Pioneers, Legends and True Tales. Click the title of the book if you'd like to purchase a copy.  Tom was one of many early and modern mountain wanderers to lose toes to frostbite. Even today, it is a real danger for people out on snowshoes, as well as backcountry and cross-country skis. Always plan for changes in weather and remember, unlike Tom, you can always turn back if conditions change for the worse. Are wolves returning to the Bow Valley? The Bow River valley has not been a good home for wolves. Over the years, pack after pack has become established only to gradually get whittled away by vehicle and train impacts, and more recently, human food conditioning. The summer of 2016 was particularly bad for the Bow Valley wolf pack. The summer began on a very high note its 5 adults being joined by 6 new pups making for a total of 11 wolves in the pack. Unfortunately, this situation changed for the worse with four of the pups killed in two separate incidents with trains. The alpha female and another young female were both shot by Park Wardens after becoming accustomed to handouts from campers in the Two Jack Lake Campground. By the end of the season, none of the pups had survived. In a separate incident, one of the remaining wolves was shot by a hunter in B.C. By 2017, there were only two wolves remaining and they dispersed. As of Sept 2017, the alpha male had joined a pack in the southern part of Banff known as the Spray Pack. The surviving female had joined another male and possibly moved out of the area. Paul Paquette is a well-respected biologist who headed the largest wolf study ever undertaken in the Bow Valley. In recent years he was quoted as stating the following about the challenges for wolves in the Bow River valley: “It’s a wildlife ghetto. People need to understand, the Bow Valley has two townsites that are growing, two highways, a corridor for high transmission power lines, dams, golf courses, ski hills … They’ve got all that in the valley, so you can imagine the responses for the wolves and wildlife – it’s a ghetto for them and they’re trying to survive in there.” We are in a constant battle with developers and the town to try to make sure that we can keep wildlife like wolves and grizzly bears on the landscape. Recently, there seems to be a reason for cautious optimism. The Bow Valley is great habitat for wolves when you consider the high numbers of potential prey animals available to them. In a recent interview on CBC, Jesse Whittington, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada stated: "We're curious about what's going to happen," said Whittington. "Either the old male and the pack from the Spray could move back into the Bow Valley, or one of the neighbouring packs might slide in." In October of 2017, three wolves were spotted west of Banff near Castle Mountain. These were previously unknown wolves that may be looking for a new place to call home. As Jesse Whittington stated in an interview with the Rocky Mountain Outlook: "If you have a male and female who hook-up and have pups, all of a sudden you could have a pack of seven wolves, and if those pups survive and have pups again, you get a pretty large pack" The Bow Valley has not been kind to its wolves, but we still need them. They play a key role in keeping elk and deer populations in check. It's too easy to look at Banff today and point out the world-class wildlife crossings along the highway and assume that wolves will have an easy time coexisting with people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The section of highway that is fenced is primarily through Banff and a little to the east and west.  Wolves cover vast ranges and the crossing structures only protect them in a small part of their range. The train tracks and Bow Valley Parkway also remain unfenced. Just this past November, two wolves were killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Canmore. It was trains that killed 4 of the pack's cubs in 2016. Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway have been conducting ongoing research around the idea of fencing and other wildlife warning systems in areas of highest danger. We also have rampant development in areas like Canmore which can hamper movement through the valley to the east and south into Kananaskis and beyond. And finally, we have the challenge of people on the landscape. More than 90% of the use of our designated wildlife corridors in and around Canmore was by people. If the corridors are viewed as just another recreational trail, then eventually, the wildlife will simply avoid the corridor altogether. In the past, we've been lucky enough to have several wolf packs adjacent to the Bow Valley, for instance in the Cascade and Spray Valleys, but the Bow Valley Pack has come and gone repeatedly due to the many hazards that face them when they arrive in the valley. Let's keep our fingers crossed that these wolves do stick around. We need to do our part to make sure they have the best possible opportunity to survive and thrive. Here are a few things that we can do to help keep our wolves safe: Slow down on highways like the Trans-Canada, Bow Valley Parkway, Highway 40, and Spray Lakes Road Never ever feed wildlife or stand idly by while other people offer food. Keep your distance. Moving ever closer for that selfie puts your life, and the life of the animal, at risk. Obey trail closures. They are there for a reason. If we all make a point of doing what we can to keep wildlife safe and help to educate visitors who may not be aware of the consequences of their actions, then we may be able to help keep wolves on the landscape. Next up 10 New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks New Years Resolutions for the Mountain Parks The mountains are more than just a place to hike, bike and explore. They are home to 53 species of mammals, 260 species of birds, 996 species of vascular plants, 407 lichens, 243 mosses, and 53 liverworts (source: http://canadianparks.com/alberta/banffnp/page3.html). There are also almost 90 species of fungi in the mountain parks (source: http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/pubwarehouse/pdfs/11896.pdf). Everything we do in the mountains has an impact and here are some resolutions that will help you to better appreciate this beautiful place. Explore less busy sites. More than 95% of visitation to the mountain parks visits the same 2 or 3% of the park, essentially the paved corridors. Many of the attractions along these roads are in serious need of upgrades to help prevent the masses of tourists from creating permanent damage. Quiet Times are the Best Times. If you really want to get the experience that you saw on the brochure, get an alarm clock. The sun comes up early in the mountains during the summer months. If you're on the shores of Lake Louise or Moraine Lake at 6 am, you'll likely have the view all to yourself…and don't tell anybody, but those two sites are best when the sun first hits the mountains. Don't forget the evening though as well. Once the hordes head back to their hotels, the landscape quiets down again and you can have that great experience. Keep track of your sightings. If you see something exciting like a grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, or wolverine - report it. Park managers are always looking to keep tabs on wildlife and sightings helps to add another data point to their wildlife research. Support organizations like the Friends of Kananaskis and Friends of Jasper. These not for profit groups do an amazing job in helping to raise awareness of park issues, run educational programs, offer volunteer opportunities to make a difference on the ground and even operate gift shops and other facilities designed to raise money for their ongoing operation. Read a good book. Our connection to our sense of place always improves with knowledge and understanding. What once was an unknown wilderness suddenly becomes a community of plants, animals, birds, and other living beings - each with an important role to play in the maintenance of the community. Every book that helps you to understand the place you call home can only enhance your ability to feel an even stronger connection to that place. Meet your neighbours. The next time you walk one of the local trails, take the time to learn the story of one new plant, animal, bird, or other residents of the mountain landscape. I say "learn the story", because each one is much more than just their name. Why are they there? What role do they play? What's the coolest thing about them? As you repeat this process, the mountain landscape becomes much more familiar and ever more welcoming as you look forward to the acquaintances you've made and begin to mark the seasons by the comings and goings of old friends. Start up a neighbourhood watch. By this I mean keep an eye on your mountain community and look for changes. Are there new plants on the landscape that weren't there in the past? New birds? Changes in the community often reflect changes in the environment. Every resident of a particular community is there because that habitat offers all the essential requirements they need to survive. Plants need the right amount of moisture, sunlight, soil, nitrogen, and perhaps even a particular neighbour with whom they have a dependent relationship. Every plant will have a different list of needs, as will every bird and animal. A small change to the ecology will be reflected in changes to the individual plants and animals in that community. Simply sit down. We hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski, and snowshoe along the mountain trails season after season and year after year. Sometimes, the best experience can be had by simply sitting quietly and absorbing everything that's around you. Take off your shoes and socks (in the summer of course), and feel connected to the landscape. Listen to the sounds. Can you recognize all the birds around you? Watch the fish rising in the water to eat insects hatching on the surface. Smell the air. Are their particular smells that spark a memory? Smell is the sense most tied to memory and often a strong smell will instantly transport you to a particular place or time in your personal history. For me, the pungent sweet smell of wolf willow represents the smell of home. Talk to a senior. Our sense of place is more than just learning the natural history. To understand the natural history, we also have to understand the ways that people have interacted with it in the past. Somebody that's been on the land for 50 years can share insights that only come with the passing of the years and the experiences that those years brought. The elders are the keepers of the stories. They are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and time spent talking with elders about their lifetime of adventures and understanding will always help guide you to a new appreciation of the world around you. Be a tourist now and then. Take a tour. Visit a museum or attraction. Fly in a helicopter. Often, we learn more about places we visit then we do about our own backyard. Make a point of seeing the mountains like visitors see them. Spending time with people that are seeing the Rockies for the first time is one of the things that I love the most about being a guide. Every tourist sees something different. They bring a new perspective born of a lifetime of experiences in their past. I'm constantly guided towards new perspectives simply because they are looking at a scene with fresh eyes. Why not make 2018 a year where we commit to understanding and connecting to the mountain landscape around us? If at the end of the year, you've learned a few new plants, or birds, or animals, and how they both benefit and are benefitting other members of the community, then you will have started on an exciting role that will deepen your personal sense of place. I hope to see you out there. Next up, what determines success when bears are relocated outside of their home range? Success of Relocating Grizzly Bears This past summer, people were stunned when Bear 148 was moved far from her home range. Unfortunately, she subsequently wandered across the British Columbia border and was legally shot by a hunter. The media covered this story extensively and in many cases used the wrong terminology. When wildlife managers move a bear to an area within its current home range, we call it relocating the bear. This term refers to moving a bear simply to another area that is still within its territory and within which it can comfortably survive. In cases, such as with 148, where the bear is moved far from its home range, the preferred term is translocated. This means that the bear is moved to completely unfamiliar territory where it doesn't know the seasonal food patterns or their locations. It doesn't know the landscape and it doesn't know the other resident bears into whose territory it has just been placed. As you can imagine, this puts the bear in a very high-risk situation, but just how high risk? What are its chances of surviving so far from its home range? This is one area of study that has been largely neglected until recently. There really had not been any peer-reviewed analyses of the factors that affected survival when a bear was translocated. An article published in the January 2018 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management evaluated 110 different grizzly translocations within the Alberta Rockies and looked to determine what factors impacted successful movements and looked for ways to increase the success of future translocations. Biologist Sarah Milligan and her fellow researchers defined a successful translocation as one that required no additional management intervention and showed the bear surviving one entire year without returning to its home range. It's well known that the odds are not in favour of the non-resident bear when it is moved to unfamiliar territory. Of the 110 translocations examined, a full 70% were failures. A 30% success rate is still much higher than generally reported in the media. Translocations are never popular, but unfortunately, with some bears, the only other alternative is to shoot it. Conservation officers never make the decision to move a bear lightly. They know the dangers that it will face in its new home but their first priority is the safety of the community. While Bear 148 never injured anyone, it got to the point where conservation officers simply had to make the difficult decision to move her. In order to determine the success of bears in new habitats, biologists needed to better understand how bears currently living in the area use the landscape. Researchers tagged resident bears to learn how they used the landscape, feeding habits, and denning areas. Alberta also has a long history of monitoring bear movement with satellite and radio collars and this historical data is also helpful in studies like this one. One of the biggest challenges with translocating bears is their homing instinct. Many bears will simply abandon their new homes and travel back towards their home range. It is for this reason that Bear 148 was moved north of Jasper National Park. The further the movement, the lower the likelihood that the bear will return home. The quality of the habitat into which a bear is released can also have a strong bearing on reducing the homing instinct. Ideally, the release location should match, as much as possible, the home range in terms of available foods, movement corridors, and denning sites. The study found that the success rate was highest if bears were moved as early as possible in the season. Unfortunately, in many cases, the highest potential for human-grizzly conflicts occurs during buffaloberry season between mid-July and mid-September. Translocated bears also tended to have ranges some 3.25 times larger than resident bears. This shows they needed to cover more territory in order to find sufficient forage to survive. This is likely connected to their being unfamiliar with the landscape. While their home ranges did decrease over time, they continued to be larger than resident bears. Of the translocations that were considered failures, the primary causes were homing, new incidents of conflict, and mortality. Of the 77 failed translocations, 28 bears were killed because of management actions, and 30 failed due to homing. Bears translocated more than 200 km reduced the odds of homing by 95%. When it comes to the timing of winter denning, the study showed no significant difference between resident and translocated bears. The study concluded: "Repeated conflict and mortality were the greatest causes of translocation failure. Our results suggest that the most important factors for translocation success are the level of human-caused mortality risk at the release site and the time of year when the translocation occurred. Specifically, we found that the odds of translocation success decreased with increasing levels of mortality risk surrounding the release site. This result is likely related to the large post-release movements that are typical of many wide-ranging species, which can bring individuals near areas of conflict or mortality risk." Translocation remains an important management tool. Studies like this one help wildlife officers to make the best decisions to increase the opportunities for a successful movement. It's never an easy decision to move an animal away from its home range but the more we understand ways to increase their chances of success, the more the pendulum can move towards reduced mortality. In the central Rockies, people are the biggest problem. We need to work harder to coexist with bears and to respect closures. When people violate closures, it's always the bears that pay the price. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Remember that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for snowshoe, nature, hiking, and photography guides across the mountain west. We've been sharing the stories behind the scenery for more than 30 years. Don't forget to check out the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep054 for links to additional information. You can also comment on the stories and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. If you'd like to reach out personally, you can hit me up on Twitter @wardcameron and with that said, the sun's out and it's time to go snowshoeing. I'll talk to you next week.

Welcome to episode 40 of the Mountain Nature and Culture Podcast. I'm your host, Ward Cameron, and I record this on August 16, 2017, we've finally received a bit of rain in the Canadian Rockies. Every drop is a gift at this point and hopefully it will reduce our explosive fire hazard and let us stop worrying about unplanned fires. This week, I take a look at the fire fears in Jasper as an increase in pine beetle killed pines has added vast amounts of fuel to an already tinder dry forest. I also continue the story of Major A.B. Rogers, the surveyor responsible for designing the route that the Canadian Pacific Railway follows as it traverses the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains of western Canada. Pine Beetles Wreak Havoc on Jasper's Forests I just returned from 4-days of hiking in Jasper National Park, and I was horrified by the damage being done by mountain pine beetle in the park. In a summer plagued by an almost endless drought, thousands of dead pine trees simply adds fuel to the potential for a huge fire in the park. Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a natural pest of the mountain forests of western Canada and the U.S. but historically they were only found in very low numbers in the park. The beetles create tunnels behind the bark in the layer of cells called the phloem, the thin layer of cells that transmit sugars within the plant. As they mine this layer, they may end up killing the tree, but they also carry with them a blue stain fungus. This fungus finishes the job by interrupting the ability of nutrients to move up and down the tree trunk. It also stains the wood blue, destroying any potential commercial value that it might have. If you have any doubt about the impact of a warming climate, just take a drive towards the town of Jasper. Warmer temperatures have allowed the beetles to explode in numbers and infest enormous numbers of lodgepole pine as well as western white pine. The lack of sufficiently cold winters is coupled with decades of fire suppression to provide plenty of food for them to take advantage of. The beetle is now expanding its range eastward out of the Rockies while also affecting trees at higher and higher elevation. As populations grow, the beetles disperse in one of two ways. In the first, dispersal within stands, they usually just travel a short distance, up to 30 metres or so, but when they move above the canopy into a long-distance dispersal, they can travel hundreds of kilometres. Long-distance dispersals are difficult to stop, so many of the management decisions are based on stopping dispersal within stands as the infestation spreads from tree to tree. Prior to fire suppression, many of the valleys in the mountains would have had far fewer trees as the flames would kiss the forests every 15 years or so. Today, we've created a massive monoculture of huge stands of lodgepole pine and the beetles are loving them. The simplest solution to this problem is to bring more fire, much more fire to the landscape to try to restore some of that balance. Back in episode 35, I talked about how fire is an integral part of the mountain landscape. The wildlife benefit from fire, the plant communities are refreshed and the mosaic of forest stands of different ages also helps to challenge insect pests. These regular fires, also help to protect communities like Jasper from the potential for large conflagrations like the one that the town is currently afraid could occur. Because of the huge amount of fuel that has built up over time, these fires may need to be tempered by some selective logging in areas that are too sensitive to burn. In some areas, the beetles have killed 70% of the lodgepole pine trees and the infection is spreading quickly. Experts believe that the number of infected trees could increase exponentially over the next few years, continually increasing the fire risk to communities like Jasper. Surprisingly, at a meeting in Jasper recently CAO Mark Fercho talked about his experience fighting the pine beetle when he worked in Prince George, B.C. He was quoted in the Fitzhugh newspaper as saying: “It’s the green trees that are full of beetles, not the red ones,” Each one of those live trees can infect a dozen or more additional trees. The area of infected trees has tripled since 2014 to some 21,500 ha. Back in the day, when we had proper winters, it was the cold that helped keep the beetles at bay. On average, mid-winter temperatures in the range of -37 C are sufficient to kill 50% of the beetle larvae. Earlier in the season, temperatures as low as -20 C can also be effective. Communities like Prince George were forced to cut down thousands of trees in order to reduce the fire hazard in and around the community. They followed that by a replanting program to help replace the lost trees. Standing dead trees, like those left behind by pine beetles are capable of sending sparks high into the sky allowing fires to spread. Natural fires are not quite as explosive simply because they lack the tinder dry, standing, dead wood. Jasper has a lot of work ahead of it, and the character of the place will also change. If Parks is able to combine increased prescribed burns along with selective clearing of standing dead trees, the future may not be as bleak as it seems at the moment. Across North America, fire experts are beginning to realize that the biggest challenges faced by most forests is NOT forest fires, but the lack of them. More and more fire ecologists are suggesting that fires be simply left to burn themselves out - at least those that don't threaten human lives or property. These same scientists suggest that if some of the money being spent on suppression were actually devoted to fireproofing homes in communities then these towns may actually be much safer than they currently are. With changing climates and increased beetle expansion, fires are coming. I applaud the work Parks Canada is doing in recognizing the growing challenges that our western forests are experiencing and, for Jasper, I hope that they have received some of the rainfall that finally soaked my hiking group over the past few days. I'm happy to walk in the rain, and even the snow that we had yesterday, if it helps to reduce the fire hazard that we have all been worried about in the mountain west. A.B. Roger's Line Last week I talked about Major A.B. Rogers and his quest to find a route through the Bow Valley and the Selkirk Mountains in B.C. Well, by the end of the 1882 season he'd found a route…or had he? Unfortunately for the Major, his unlikeable personality meant that he had a long line of rivals that considered him to be all bluster and no substance…and then there was the fact that he was…oh, what's that word? Oh, yah…American! Even back then, there was that inherent rivalry, although we would see more American involvement in this line before the last spike would be driven home. By the start of the 1883 season, nobody BUT Rogers had actually traversed his route through the Selkirks, the Kicking Horse Pass route was far from finished, and finally, there was the matter of some inconvenient tunnels to be corrected. All in all, it was just another frantic year of exploring, confirming, and changing the slowly coalescing line on a map that would, just a few years down the road, become the tie that binds this nation together. In addition, Rogers was acting as a pathfinder as opposed to a proper surveyor. The fact that he forced his way through some mad wilderness, that didn't mean a train could follow his trail of tobacco stains. Any potential route still needed axe men, transit men, and the levelers before a real route could be confirmed. It really needed more than that. It needed a sober investigation to prove that the route down the Bow River, through the Kicking Horse Pass, and across the Selkirks was indeed possible. Too much money and time were being invested in this commitment to risk any chance of error. Rogers had his detractors. Perhaps it was his gruff nature, or his penny-pinching way of economizing on supplies, leading many of his expeditions to retreat on the verge of starvation. One of those was Jon Egan, the western Superintendent of the railway. He was unwavering in his assessment of the route through the Selkirks: "I want to tell you positively that there is no pass in the Selkirk Range...It has to be crossed in the same manner as any other mountain. The track must go up one side and down the other." At the same time, the Governor General of Canada, the Marquis of Lorne, the husband of Princess Louise (after whom Lake Louise is named), also was concerned about the potentially steep gradients that might be involved, but he was more concerned with the time constraints. As he put it: "It would be better to have them than further delay, with the N. Pacific gaining Traffic." Any fan of TV shows like Hell on Wheels, coincidentally filmed along the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, can understand the focus on time and money. This was the biggest investment this young nation had embarked upon and, quite frankly, we couldn't afford it. Time was money and every dollar spent was not easily replaced down the road. While some may have underestimated Rogers because of his American birth, there was one American that nobody dared underestimate, the General Manager of the line, William Cornelius Van Horne. Van Horne is the star of the show, and I'll devote an entire episode to sharing his story but at this point, he pondered: "we must take no chances on this season's work because any failure to reach the desired results and have the line ready to put under contract will be serious if not disastrous. I think it important that you should take an extra engineer, who is fully competent, to take charge of a party in case of sickness or failure of any of your regular men." Van Horne was also concerned about the fact that Rogers often pushed his workers in difficult conditions with few rations. He added: "It is also exceedingly important that an ample supply of food be provided and that the quantity be beyond a possibility of a doubt. "Very serious reports have been made to the Government and in other quarters about the inadequacy of the supplies provided last year and a good many other reports have been made tending to discredit our work. The officials in Ottawa, as a consequence look upon our reports with a good deal of suspicion... "We cannot expect to get good men for that work at as low or lower rates than are paid further East and we must feed the men properly in order to get good service. It will be cheaper for the Company to pay for twice the amount of supplies actually necessary than to lose a day's work for lack of any." To understand his caution, we need to remember that the ribbon of steel that was the Canadian Pacific was winding westward day after day after day, mile after mile, creeping ever closer to this question mark on the map. Every rail cost money. Every railroad tie cost money. The further west the line progressed, the more committed they were to a route for which some still harbored doubt. Despite this dispatch, Van Horne fully trusted Rogers, he just came from a very different point of view. He defended Rogers to a businessman in New York: "There has been a good deal of feeling among some of the Canadian Engineers particularly those who have been accustomed to the Government Service against Major Rogers, partly from natural jealousy of one who is looked upon as an outsider, partly from his lively treatment of those whom he looks upon as shirkers or 'tender feet' and partly from his somewhat peculiar methods of securing economy, but more that all perhaps from his having succeeded, as is supposed, in doing what was unsuccessfully attempted by the Gov't Engineers, namely, in getting through the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains by a direct line. "I believe him to be capable and I know him to be thoroughly honest. He is something of an enthusiast and is disposed to undertake himself and put upon his men more severe duties than most engineers are accustomed to and I have reason to believe that in his anxiety to economize in every possible way he has gone too far in some cases and that a good deal of unnecessary discomfort, although no suffering, has resulted from it." The route was to be scrutinized from east to west, beginning with the area closest to the westward moving rails, the Bow Valley, beginning at Fort Calgary and extending westward. Charles Shaw was asked by James Ross, the western division manager to look at Rogers line covering the first 60 miles to the west of Calgary. He was unimpressed. He stated: "It's a nightmare to me and I'm afraid it will hold us back a year." Shaw felt he could improve on the line when Roger's who was present at the time leaped to his feet and blurted: "That's the best line that can be got through the country. Who in hell are you, anyway?" Undeterred, Shaw claimed that if he could not only find a better line, but: "If I don't save at least half a million dollars over the estimated cost of construction, I won't ask for pay for my season's work." There was another tunnel to the west, around a mountain in Banff. Van Horne knew it would delay work so Van Horne demanded: "Look at that," the general manager exclaimed. "Some infernal idiot has put a tunnel in there. I want you to go up and take it out." He was talking to his locating engineer J.H.A. Secretan, never a fan of Rogers, yet Secretan responded: "Mr. Van Horne, those mountains are in the way, and the rivers don't all run right for us. While we are at it we might as well fix them, too" In the end, Roger's nemesis Shaw, found a way to just go around the mountain which still bears the name 'Tunnel Mountain" in Banff although the tunnel was never actually built. Shaw was very critical for Rogers because he missed this option. He stated: "Roger's location here was the most extraordinary blunder I have ever known in the way of engineering" To make matters worse, Shaw was now sent to examine Rogers route through the Selkirks. This was easier said than done. To get to the Selkirks, you first needed to cross the Kicking Horse…and it held its own special brand of challenges. One did not just stroll, down the Kicking Horse, no more than Albert Rogers strolled, er crawled up. To traverse the Kicking Horse, you had to survive the Golden Staircase. Essentially, you had to survive a two-foot wide trail carved into the cliffs several hundred feet above the raging waters of the Kicking Horse River. The surveyors that plied these mountains were some of the toughest men these mountains have ever seen, but some were so terrified by the Golden Staircase that they would literally shut their eyes and hold on to the tail of their horse for guidance. As Shaw descended, he encountered a packer with a single horse ascending the staircase while he had an entire packtrain. As they mentally went through the arithmetic, one horse, several horses, one horse, several horses. In the end, they had no other option than to push the one horse off the cliff to its death. You simply can't turn a horse around on a 24 inch ledge. To attempt it risked spooking the entire pack train and risking much more dire consequences. So Shaw gets to the bottom and he bumps into the old man. I know, what are the odds. An entire mountain range and…oops, what brings you here. Rogers, in his usual congenial manner offered up a pleasant greeting that went something like: "Who the hell are you, and where the hell do you think you're going?" Thankfully, Shaw was a more reasonable man…or maybe not. The exchange continued. "It's none of your damned business to either question. Who the hell are you, anyway?" "I am Major Rogers." "My name is Shaw. I've been sent by Van Horne to examine and report on the pass through the Selkirks." That was a name that Rogers knew. Rogers was not a man to forgive a slight and he virtually exploded: "You're the…Prairie Gopher that has come into the mountains and ruined my reputation as an Engineer" Shaw was a big man, a much bigger man than Rogers and so he wasted no time jumping off his horse and grabbed Rogers  by the throat, shaking him and threatening? "Another word out of you and I'll throw you in the river and drown you" Rogers, not a big fan of water since his incident in Bath Creek in last week's episode, decided to back down. He claimed that he had been let down by an engineer and agreed to show him the route through the Selkirks. Rogers dragged Shaw up the Beaver River to the divide and then down to the Illecillewaet River. Shaw constantly criticized the route. At every turn, Shaw was there to dismiss Rogers and demean his progress. Simple things could add fuel to the fire…even former fires. As the story goes, Rogers gestured to the great Illecillewaet Glacier and exclaimed: "Shaw, I was the first white man to ever set eyes on this pass and this panorama." Shortly after this happened, Shaw found the remains of a campfire along with some rotted tent poles and asked Rogers where they had come from. The hatred continued in the exchange. Rogers replied: "How strange! I never noticed those things before. I wonder who could have camped here." To which Shaw countered: "These things were left here years ago by Moberly when he found this pass!" This was a world of egos and it usually seemed that one surveyor could never praise commend or support the work of another. Rogers was an easy man to hate and it brought him great grief. Stories like this sowed doubt in the Canadian Pacific and this pass had to be carefully scrutinized before the line could continue. After Shaw departed Rogers, heading eastward towards the Kicking Horse Pass, they encountered a second party dispatched to check up on Roger's route, led by none other than Sandford Fleming himself. Fleming had been dispatched by George Stephen, one of the two main financiers of the railroad; and if Stephen suggested an outing, you kitted up and headed for the hills. Shaw enjoyed telling Fleming that the route was impassable and that Rogers was a charlatan. As it turned out, Fleming ignored most of Shaw's stories because he had just descended the Kicking Horse and it had been the most horrifying experience of his many years in the wilderness. Nothing could possibly be worse…or could it? Descending the 'golden staircase, he later stated that he could not look down. If you did: "gives one an uncontrollable dizziness, to make the head swim and the view unsteady, even with men of tried nerve. I do not think that I can ever forget that terrible walk; it was the greatest trial I ever experienced." It was also a scorching hot summer, much like this one, and he added:  "I, myself, felt as if I had been dragged through a brook, for I was without a dry shred on me," Now let's back this up a little. All this happened before they met Rogers. As they continued on, Shaw's allegations faded and they began to recover from the terror of the Kicking Horse Pass. After connecting with Rogers, he dragged them up to the pass and Fleming, happy to see a way over the ramparts pulled out a box of cigars and toasted Rogers accomplishments and proposed that a Canadian Alpine Club be formed. Fleming was immediately voted in as president. The concept did not really take shape though until 1906 when former railroad surveyor A.O. Wheeler and reporter Elizabeth Parker took this spark and created the Alpine Club of Canada on March 27, 1906. Of course, this is a story for another episode. Things took a turn for the worse when they began the descent down the western side, into the dense interior rainforest of the Columbia Mountains. Along with Fleming was his former Minister George Grant and the experience was so harrowing that Grant would never return to such a wilderness again. As he described it: "It rained almost every day. Every night the thunder rattled over the hills with terrific reverberations, and fierce flashes lit up weirdly [sic] tall trees covered with wreaths of moss, and the forms of tired men sleeping by smoldering camp fires." In the following 5 days, they travelled only 27 km. How bad could it be? According to Grant, they pushed their way: "through acres of densest underbrush where you cannot see a yard ahead, wading through swamps and beaver dams, getting scratched from eyes to ankles with prickly thorns, scaling precipices, falling over moss- covered rocks into pitfalls, your packs almost strangling you, losing the rest of the party while you halt to feel all over whether any bones are broken, and then experiencing in your inmost soul the unutterable loneliness of savage mountains." Essentially, a good time was had by all. In this time of catered tourism with 5 million visitors a year swarming over routes that caused terror, hardship, privation, and death. It's important at times to stop, step back and wonder…if these forbearers could see what we have done with their legacy what would they think? As they see the landscape trampled and the wildlife sequestered, what would people like Rogers and Fleming say? They saw the landscape in its rawest form when even the idea of a national railway was simply a fanciful idea. Today, we don't have room for a single grizzly. We think it's more important for our dog to pee than it is for black and grizzly bears to be able to feed on the single food that allows them to exist on the landscape. Rogers was a miserable curmudgeon. He loved neither man nor beast, but he loved one thing…wilderness. As a guide, I spend a great deal of time relating the stories of those that came before. At the same time, I've written three books on the trails of western Canada and designed a 7-day mountain bike race that both Bike Magazine and Mountain Bike Magazine called 'North America's Toughest Race'. This meant that I had to explore thousands of kilometres alone in the wilderness. During this time, I often reflected on the experiences of these explorers and pioneers…the men that came before. To them, the wilderness was not something to be appreciated, it was something to be conquered…or was it? People often ask me about these men. I reply that" "Lots of people want to know what these men thought when they tore through that last tangle of wilderness and encountered an emerald green lake that had a glacier capped peak at the far end. To the left was a sheer vertical wall, and to the right was a matching vertical wall. What did they really think? Damn, another dead end!" These mountains were not something to be appreciated, they were something to be survived. Yet today, we see them with an eye of entitlement. The journals of these explorers describe a landscape of hardship and terror, but also one full of wonder and opportunity. As I look at the decisions being made just on local levels when it comes to preserving these landscapes and the ecosystems and animals that call them home. I fear that I may be one of the storytellers writing the last chapter… chroniclers of the end of our local wilderness and the animals that define it.  And with that said, it's time to wrap this episode up. I want to thank you for sharing your time with me and if you like the stories, please share the episodes with your friends. Stories are always best when shared. At Ward Cameron Enterprises, we sell wow! As a tour operator for the last 30 years, we can make sure your visit to the mountain west is one that you'll never forget. We specialize in hiking and step-on guides as well as speaking programs, nature and culture workshops and guide training. Drop us a line at info@wardcameron.com if you'd like to book your mountain experience. Today I took clients up to Mirror Lake and along the Highline Trail in Lake Louise. It's a classic trail that offers the option to crest the Big Beehive and offer panoramic views for miles. I'll post a picture in the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep040.

Eating is an inherently social activity. We chose where we eat based not only on the type of food we seek, but the community we want to be part of. Today we speak with three Portland community creators: Briana and Andrew Volk, owners of the Portland Hunt and Alpine Club and upcoming Little Giant restaurant, and Briana Holt, head baker at Tandem Coffee and Bakery. Photo by Erin Little https://www.themainemag.com/radio/2017/01/neighborhood-nourishment-279/

Ogden Everest summiter's Will Calton and Tom Burton shaking hands after accepting a community award from the Ogden Mayer for their accomplishments. Our first episode of Fall 2012 included an interview with legendary alpinist, Douglas Scott. Doug was the first to summit the Southwest Face of Everest back in 1975. He has also summited 40 different peaks, half of which were either new routes or first ascents. Doug began climbing at the age of 12 with first documented leads in 1953. He still climbs today, "with a little help from his friends." He climbed Targo Ri (6572m), Tibet in 2000, and was the president of the Alpine Club. We also had Jen Leininger from the Ogden Valley Winter Sports Foundation in studio briefly. The OVWSF along with the GOAL Foundation helped bring Doug Scott to Ogden for a special slideshow presentation. Watch for the OVWSF annual ski swap October 26 - 28th. News stories this episode includes Ogden winners at the XTERRA Trail Run National Championships, Ogden is more beautiful than Maui, Manaslu update, angler finds human finger in trout, Tom Simms memorial paddle, heli-ski legend dies in tragic escalator incident, new women's speed record on El Cap, Daniel Woods can climb, 2013 Mugs Stump Awards now open, a motorcyclist collides with a mountain lion, and watch for iPad stealing black bears. Upcoming Events: October 6th – Antelope Island 50/100K October 12th – 9th Annual Outdoor Gear Sale & Swap October 13th – Flowrider hosts World Championships October 13th – Color Vibe 5K Fun Run – Taylor Canyon Elementary School Fundraiser October 18-21 – Fall Break Moab Trip: Climb, Kayak, Hike (Student Only) October 26th – Westminister College Climbing Comp (Student Only) Register through the Outdoor Program November 1 – First Day to Reserve the WSU OP Yurt November 5th – TGR Ski/Board Film Presented by the WSU Outdoor Program November 16th – Powder Whores Ski Film “Choose Your Adventure” December 15-19th – WSU Outdoor Program Ouray Climbing Trip For GEAR:30, we chat SkullCandy Gaming Headphones, Laird Hamilton teaming with Nidecker on new SUP line, Jones inks deal with NOW Bindings, G3 launches new website, ProBar not worried about peanuts, Outdoorgearlab.com tent awards, and K2 is cleaning industry house. All this and more on the Let it Fall Episode of the Ogden Outdoor Adventure Show! Listen now: