New discovery!

I've finally worked out what these funny little flags are for!

Working like a beaver

I'll give you $100 to put a few logs over there.

That is, not a lot. I've been hanging around beaver ponds all summer and I have only seen 3 beavers. I suspect they get contractors in to build their dams. I've definitely seen more logging trucks.

I need a one button mouse.

I finally managed to get my laptop back from the bear. I thought there might be a fight, but he said that he'd rather have a Mac. Aye bear. That'll be right.

Anyway, it has been a bit hectic here. I think my last post was the week after the Stampede. My mum had gone with Amanda to Saskatoon for the week, and we got some work done. On the Sunday before my mum was due to arrive in Canmore, we had an open day at the field centre. Basically a day where anyone passing can come in and have a look at the different projects going on. This meant 6 hours sitting at a table with a poster of my work displayed behind me and various items from our field work in front. It was a case of answering the same questions over and over again to a variety of people; park rangers, university professors, random members of the public. The main difficulty was maintaining a straight face every time I said the word beaver. But I am getting better at that. There was a worrying moment when the CTV crew visiting looked like they may come and interview me. I think the massive beard and unintelligible accent probably dissuaded them though. Not sure having me on the Calgary news would help with shedding the stereotypical image of "Scottish" here.

Not my ideal Sunday, but at least there was a bbq and free booze afterwards. The free booze also help bring out some stereotypes. It was nice to finally have a sociable gathering with other people, many of which I hadn't ever seen around the centre. The main two national groupings are Canadian and American. The Americans set up the drinking games early on, keen to show they are party animals. They were first to fall. The Canadians stayed until all the free booze was finished. Some pretty good going there. The Scottish dragged his field assistant back to the cabin to continue drinking whisky and watch Billy Connolly, Danny Bhoy, and Frankie Boyle clips till 4 in the morning. As I said, stereotypes. Well, the good thing about being the boss is being able to call "office" days when you need to.

Dangerous.

 

So monday was an office day. My mum also arrived in the afternoon. Strangely on the same flight as my supervisor. She was out doing her own work though, not checking up on me. My mum was staying in Canmore, and so was Cherie, so we all met up for dinner on monday evening at the Grizzly Paw bar. Bison burger and Beaver tail ale. If you can find me a more Canadian sounding meal, I want to hear about it! It was very good.

Burstall pass site. Not bad.

Remember when you made me do chores?

Tuesday I recruited my mother as field assistant. I had a walk planned which just happened to go past a site I needed to visit. What better way to show someone your work by getting them involved. I'm such a thoughtful person. The walk was along Burstall Pass trail. It is actually very nice. And the car journey to get there is along the Spray Valley, which is a lovely drive if you like snow peaked mountains and stuff like that. It's all getting a bit samey to me.

Falling water. Strangely interesting.

The rest of the week was mostly hiking around. Particularly memorable was fridays visit to Johnston Canyon. A very sanitised trail up to two big waterfalls. Actually paved all the way. It's very popular, but it does have some nice waterfalls. There is also a less popular trail going on from the upper waterfall towards some freshwater springs which pool up on the surface. These are called inkpots because they show up different shades of blue or green. Something to do with the speed at which the water rises. I guess they must have been rising at the same rate that day, because they were mostly

Scottish people in their element

water coloured! That was a reasonably good walk though, a nice long uphill and then about a kilometre downhill to the inkpots. The valley they are in was a nice spot for lunch. Seems to be the meeting point for 3 valleys. Made for some good scenery. On the walk back we got caught in a massive thunderstorm. At one point the thunder broke directly overhead,which was fun. In a scary fun kind of way. The storm lasted about 15 mins, which seemingly was enough to pull down a tree over the trail. The rain stopped just as we got back to the car park. Which was nice. Luckily we both brought changes of clothes.

Inkpot

Nice spot for lunch.

Juxta...

It was still reasonably early, so we decided to drive on to Lake Louise. On the drive we met the thieving bear. Quite impressive though. I guess I shouldn't have got out of the car to take a photo, but there were another 20 people there, so I thought I could probably outrun at least one of them. Lake Louise is really pretty. Probably the best view so far this summer. As long as you keep your back to the monstrosity behind you! I can't believe that that hotel was allowed to be built. The complete scene looks like a dictionary definition of "juxtaposition". Looking up the lake to the glacier is just awesome though.

...position

So that was friday going pretty well. Nice walk, bear sighting, awesome glacier viewing. Then we drove back towards Canmore. It turned out that the downpour we were caught in caused a mudslide across highway 1 just outside Banff. This is the section of Higway one where there are no alternative routes, so you get funnelled through the national parks gate and have to pay the $10 entry for the pleasure of using their roads. The pleasure turning out to be taking 3 hours to get past the mudslide! These things happen I suppose. They seemed to have mostly cleared it up by the time we passed it. I feel sorry for the people who got there just after it happened. They must have been waiting for about 6 hours. Eventually we made it back to Canmore though, in time for a much needed beer, and dinner.

It was great having my mum across, but when she left on tuesday, that meant a big push to get back into working. We did manage one site day will she was here, and got up to 74. Anything above 80 will be a bonus. Now the main focus is the GPR. Gipper has been getting many walks this week. But I'll leave that to another post, because I have to think about how to make it even slightly entertaining...

Some more photos...

Paddling

3 hour tailback.

Another good office.

Seriously, why are they so interesting?

Hardcore rock climbing in sandals.

Grassi lakes.

Grassi again

Castle mountain

I am Bear

I recently came into possession of this laptop after a scared little tourist dropped it while I was chasing him. I let him get away though, I wasn't that hungry.

I feel I should take this opportunity to once and for all answer that question all you humans keep asking about bears. For the record, it seems a bit fetishistic that you all have such an interest as to where we partake in our toilette, but hey, live and let live. For your information, we build nice composting toilets in an environmentally friendly way. Unfortunately we build them too small, and usually in car parks near where all you annoying tourists park, so we can't use them. So generally for a bit of privacy, yes, we do stick to the woods. But roads are also fine, as are wetlands, trails and just outside your cabin or RV when no one is looking. Maybe this isn't the most classy way to evacuate, but certainly more classy than having an obssession about asking where we do it!

Sixty Nine

Just your average warning sign...

Get your mind out of the gutter. That's the number of sites we have now visited. Not bad considering the various setbacks we've had. Works out at just under 14 a week. And we have another 12 on the list to visit which, all being well, takes us to 83. And if we get permission to go on the Stoney-Nakoda reserve, we can even add to that. So probably 83 then... 83 is a good number. I have to admit to putting a greater emphasis on quantity rather than quality recently. A bit of catch up and a bit of reality biting. In the office looking at the aerial photos, walking a few km through solid forest seems not too troublesome. After bushwhacking a few hundred metres a few times, you have to readjust your expectations! It's been a matter of trying to balance objectives. Objective one basically requires me to visit as many wetlands as possible to get a good sample of the 500 or so I identified in the office. Objective 3 requires me to visit as many beaver inhabited ones as possible so we can find good sites to walk Gipper on. Unfortunately a lot of the beaver inhabited ones are quite remote, so trade offs have had to be made.

Hmmm, pretty flat...

Of course, what doesn't help is when you forget your working thesis title has the word "mountain" in it, until after a 3 hour return drive and 6 site visits! Yes, I was quite pleased with our days work, until I realised that maybe we got on quickly because there were very few hills to go over. In fact, almost prairie flat. So that was monday. Which made tuesday an unplanned office day to have a closer look at my GIS and work out how much of my study area needs cut, and how many sites I need to remove since they are not, in fact, particularly near any mountains. A minor issue.

Wednesday was a lesson in preparation. Always pack the sunscreen. It was pretty dry this week,

Ummmm, flat again...

and very warm. Getting up to 30 degrees most days. So wednesday we took the orange monstrosity out to the site I messed up last time (site 4 - GPRed a bit that didn't have peat...). We had all the equipment this time. Gipper, the GPS (gips?), soil corer. We did 4 lines of about 30m, then cored as far down as possible every 5m to cross reference with radar images. Good to know that that takes about 7 hours. 7 hours is a lot when it's hot and you didn't pack the sunscreen. Two red faced people there. Just embarrassment of course. Honestly, not a single cloud passed the sun that day. Apart from that, everything went pretty well. Until I got back and looked at the radar images. Now, I was careful to set up the equipment in two different ways, and

Still can't see any hills.

save those settings. Then I ran each line using both settings. For some reason on two of the lines, the machine has recorded the full length, but decided the distance was 10m, and not 30. So those are quite compressed. Then, using the same settings on the other two lines, it has decided that those lines were 60m, and has stretched the radar images. Otherwise the images were pretty good. I have no idea what went wrong there. If it was the same on all 4, I would have said distance calibration error. So we'll have to do that again. Grrrrrr. At least we don't need to core again. That was the biggest pain in the arms.

Ahhhh, that's better.

Thursday we had more sites near the flat area planned. A bit of reconnaissance too, to make sure these were hilly enough.Thankfully they were. Not thankfully, however, some of them were on private property. We ended up with 4 though, so that was alright. It also allowed us to get back to the field centre by 2.30 and get all the weeks paperwork done. The plan was to go out of friday to redo the Gipper lines. But there was a heavy thunderstorm overnight, so I decided not to risk it being wet. That meant working out what to do with our day. All paperwork done meant nothing much to do around the field centre. So we worked out 10 more sites up north to visit, and would just see how many we got to. A few of these were pretty remote, along a trail

What the hell was that?!

suspiciously similar to the one we buried the mid sized SUV in. It also has a sign at the start saying that it was a private road and that "authorisation is required for commercial access". Well, our access wasn't for commercial purposes, and it didn't say no trespassing, so we went for it. Luckily it was a much better road than where we got sunk. This is probably the most remote we have gone, so nice that there was a decent track all the way out! It looks like there are some sort of large animals out there by the strange tracks on the path. The less time out of the SUV the better! We got two sites here, followed by another 7. So a new record and a good days work. None of these sites had beaver in them, which is where quantity over quality

Maybe it ate this...

is coming in...

There was a quick stop we had to make on the way home. We were passing Hidden Trails Adventures again, so in thanks for their help and hospitality we dropped by to say hello, and give them a bottle of 12 year old Auchentoshan, and 2 cans of Irn-Bru from my personal emergency stash.




That about wrapped up the week. I feel that we must be getting better at this, since there seems to be fewer funny stories to share. Well, maybe we'll have more disasters next week. That is the joy of this sort of thing. Pretty unpredictable!

These trivia huts are dotted around the area. For those who like quizzing in the wild!

Load of Bull.

And horse, and pig and sheep. Basically anything farm related. Plus many many many many many pretend cowboys. And a few real ones. I'm talking about the Calgary Stampede of course!

Welcome!

Nice boots.

My mum, Amanda and I left for Calgary on thursday morning, abandoning May, Dhiraj and Jeff to deal with the Jeep. Very considerate of me. Me and my mum walked around Calgary for a while. Lots of people buying cowboy boots and hats. Clearly the Stampede build up was reaching fever pitch. I've always thought cowboy boots were for weirdos or actual cowboys, so have never been in the least bit tempted to get a pair, but I may have to modify my opinion! There were quite a few very interesting pairs of boots on display. We managed to resist though. Hefty price tags do that. Besides, I was still worrying about the Jeep. When Jeff called at 3ish to say they had extracted it, it was a huge relief! Perfect set up for going stampeding!

I had been badly needing a beer since the day before, so I finally got one at the place we went for dinner. Black Betty's Burger and Winebar. I'm not a restaurant critic, but I would say the burgers were good, but not great. More to my liking was the Okanagan Summerweizen on tap. Lovely. It's my beer of the field season. From there it was back to Amanda's aunt and Uncles house, who were kindly putting us up for the weekend. The last time I stayed there, there was an impromptu 4am beer session followed by a fantastic hangover. Amanda gained her revenge for being woken when I stumbled to bed by dragging me around Ikea at 10am. Horrific. Lucky for me they were out when we got there, so I would still make the stampede in the morning!

Blending in.

The entertainment tent.

11am on Friday, we got to the Stampede grounds. For those who don't know, the Calgary Stampede has a dedicated ground, basically to hold a rodeo once a year. So they take it pretty seriously. First things first, we had to get our cowboy hats to help us blend in. Mine was nice and understated. We met a friend of Amanda's who is a bit of a rodeo fan and goes to a couple a year. I suspect he wasn't impressed with my headgear. I suspect many people weren't impressed. I certainly got more than one funny look! Not sure the Calgary Stampede is ready for that sort of thing.

No, I didn't steal her hat! It's mine!

So on to the actual rodeo part. For those that don't know, that's where all the cowboy 'sports' come in. I can't quite remember all the names, so some of these might be made up. There was some horsie riding thing, where a belt type thing is tightened around the horse belly just in front of its back legs. This caused the horse to buck, trying to kick off the belt thing. The contestants have to try and stay on for 8 seconds. I gather there are different types of this. Novice, bareback, saddled I think. So a fair bit of this. Then there was the calf lassoing. Easy one to understand, this. A cowboy on a horse and a calf are released from gates at the same time, and the cowboy has one attempt to lasso it, then jump off his horse and tie up its legs. A bit cruel looking. So it was quite funny to see at least 5 out of 10 people miss. A new record apparently. 'Mon the calves! There was also

Mounties being stereotypical.

Steer Tackling(?). This looked a bit crazy. Steer and rider released at the same time. Rider has to jump off his horse and tackle the steer around the horns and tip it on its back! What amazed me is that when they let the steer up, it didn't try and get its revenge. I know I would! Bull riding was also done. This is much the same as the horsie riding thing, except with a pissed off bull. Ominously, the announcer told us that one of the bulls had killed two people this year. Yikes! All these events are for men only. So I imagine that in the interests of keeping the ladies sweet, the barrel race thing was introduced at some point. Ladies get to ride as fast as possible in a figure of eight around three barrels. Awww, isn't that nice, that they get something to make them feel involved! There was also a hilarious kiddies race thing. They have teams of three, and a line attached to a young horse. The gate opens and the horse tries to run away. The kids have to try and catch the horse and then one of them has to jump on and ride it for a few seconds. What mostly happens, is the three kids manage to stop the horse, then one lets go of the rope to jump on, the horse is able to bolt and one kid lets go and the other gets dragged around the arena! Fair play though, some of those kids took a good dragging before they gave up!

So that was the rodeo part. Completely foreign to me, but very entertaining. After that we watched some cattle penning. Which is very impressive. There are 30 cattle, numbered 0-9 (so 3 of each number). 3 riders have to weed out the number called, and drive those cattle to the pen, while keeping the others away. A bit like one man and his dog, but a lot faster. And with 3 men. And horses. And cattle. And no sheep. And no dogs. So nothing like one man and his dog. More entertaining than it sounds! We also watched the heavy horse show. But the less said about that the better. A good place for a nap.

Good ole boys... and girls.

Before heading home, we watched the Stampede band play a medley. They were very good. But after half an hour, I kind of felt they had made their point. Still another half an hour to watch though. The Stampede band is clearly an inclusive organisation for young people. As long as you're middle class and well off you can get in... They were very good, but it seems strange to me that anyone that age would put in so much effort to be in a band. I can only imagine they are quite geeky at school...

That was quite a long day, so we headed home. This time I couldn't avoid the drinking with our hosts. Fortunately we all managed to show some restraint and get to bed by 1! This was good since we planned to be at the Stampede again on Saturday.

Deep fried cheesecake!

We headed to the grounds a bit later on Saturday, as we planned to go to the evening show and fireworks. Mostly we just walked around, looking at agricultural stuff and food stalls and the rides. Now, the food was quite interesting. Canadians are clearly engaged in research into what foods can be served on a stick. Hotdogs, and corn dogs, obviously. Spiral sliced potato crisp, sure, why not. Pizza on a stick? Errr, okay, well done getting that to work! And I'll no longer ever take any abuse from a Canadian over the presumption that deep fried mars bars are common in Scotland, and that we deep fry everything. Here's a list of deep fried things I saw;

Waffle dogs!

Salad anyone? Anyone?!

Oreos, cheescake, Kool Aid! There were many more, but I forget. I had also been promised donut burgers. A maple glazed donut, with a burger in the middle. Apparently it didn't make the cut this year. Probably lost all its customers through heart attacks. There were waffle dogs though. A hot dog wrapped in a belgian waffle. They'd probably deep fry that if you asked. It wasn't all unhealthy food, there was a salad stall. It had no queue.

Bang! Is what that sounded like.

Anyway, the start of the evening was the Chuckwagon racing. Or as a result of my bad memory, the Chubbycars. This isn't my first Chubbycar race. I saw them at the Saskatoon Ex. Quite a strange one to explain. So I'll just give you a you tube link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy7AveEtHZ8. Perfectly set up for betting. A pity it's illegal. After that it was the evening show. All very big budget looking, with lots of flashing lights and loud, bad

So so.

music. Some good acrobatic acts. Then some country signer called Paul Brandt or something. I though that was the name of the president of Canada, but maybe that's Ben Harper, I forget... Anyway, popular country music holds no interest for me, so it was without regret that we left a bit early, and watched the fireworks from outside of the grandstand. They were pretty good. Pity my phones camera is rubbish.

Lucky not to be Scottish

Oh, and one little bit of history about the Calgary Stampede. Apparently it was founded by a guy called Guy Weadick. Not a name that would have served well in Scotland. He would have done well to make it out of primary school there!

So that's about that. I would recommend this to anyone, especially if the idea of cowboying and all its trappings are unfamiliar to you!

Bit of a descriptive boring update this. My apologies. Reads more like an article about holiday activities in Calgary...




Oh, and a great find at the liquor store. Some good old TL. Clearly a delicacy here going by the price! Here's some left over photo's too.

YAAAAAAAAS! Yuck.

 

And why not?

Special Bud cans for the Stampede.

Zip line fail. She stopped 50m from the end and had to be rescued.

New field hat...

Cattle penning

Biiiig truck.