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Calgary
200 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2011 : 1:13 PM
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Hiked the James Walker Creek hike on Sunday as described in the "Where Locals Hike in the Canadian Rockies" book by the Copelands. While I love this book (and their Canadian Rockies one as well), their description of this trail as a "psycho"-path is a bit off - it's really no worse/better than most other trails...although perhaps a lot has changed since the writing. As long as you don't mind the occasional root or old deadfall, you'll be fine on this trail.
The trail starts at the Sawmill parking lot off of the Spray Lakes Road and climbs gently up to the basins below Mt. James Walker. Unfortunately for us the "sunny, high 17" forecast actually meant "snow, wind, high zero" so we were driven back by the cold before we got to fully explore the area. A benefit of this was that we took an unplanned route down and ended up coming across a family of ptarmigan - EIGHT in total. I've never seen so many in one group before, and as usual they were incredibly tame and despite the cold we hung around for awhile watching them. For fun you can check out the photos on my website and see if you can "spot the ptarmigan". See http://mattclay.zenfolio.com/james_walker_creek/h2f7ffa85#h2f7ffa85 and http://mattclay.zenfolio.com/james_walker_creek/h2f7ffa85#h34019cd8. There are 5 in the first photo and 3 in the second; you'll definitely need to make them full screen to have a chance!
A few other photos are below; the whole set is at http://mattclay.zenfolio.com/james_walker_creek.
 View of the basin where you are heading
 Snowy, windy basin
 One of the ptarmigans
 Panorama of the entrances to the two basins |
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Not too far from Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
224 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2011 : 2:24 PM
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Holy smokes - Where's Waldo? is MUCH easier 
Thank you for posting this report, and sorry to hear that your exploring was cut short due to crappy weather....  |
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calgary, ab
Canada
150 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2011 : 4:30 PM
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cute little guy i love seeing them
im surprised at the weather, i was down at Mt. Tyrwhitt and it was awesome, sunny n warm. Little cold when we first started, but the weather improved very quickly. |
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Calgary
200 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2011 : 8:14 PM
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| Well that's a bit annoying...we had been thinking of heading down to the Highwood Pass area in search of better weather, but I figured it would be even worse given the elevation! When we were leaving (2:30ish) it was looking quite a bit better with sunny patches, etc., but before noon it was terrible. |
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James Walker Creek and find the ptarmigan!
