The Taelemans´ Blog

The Banff Marsh Trail is a 0.5 km boardwalk trail starting at the Cave & Basin site which leads downhill into a nearby marsh next to the Bow River. It brings you close to nature and wildlife within minutes of downtown Banff. Apparently this is one of the few places in the park where you can see the completely harmless garter snake, but alas.. no luck for me so you’ll have to settle with a picture of the marsh itself.

Banff Cave & Basin Marsh | Location on map

The trail offers excellent views of Mount Norquay, which is home to one of the many ski resorts in the area, Ski Norquay.

Mount Norquay | Location on map

Of course (since we have a photo addict among us) we are far from finished with our pictures from our trip to Canada and the US, so here are a few more.

The pictures in this post show Cave and Basin National Historic Site of Canada. It commemorates the birthplace of Canada’s National Park system, which began here in 1885. Naturally occurring, warm mineral springs can be found inside the cave, and outside in an emerald coloured basin.

Banff Cave and Basin | Location on Map

Actually we had planned to go to Banff Upper Hot Springs, but since we didn’t had the time to sit in a hot spring and relax for a while (we made that up in Vegas, so don’t worry, more about that soon) we visited the Cave and Basin.

Tourists flocked to Banff in the early 19th century to restore themselves in the natural hot springs
waters at the Cave and Basin site. Nowadays it’s not allowed anymore, to use the springs as a swimming pool. People don’t really mind because they can go to the Upper Hot Springs.

Banff Cave and Basin | Location on Map

Like I said, it’s breathtaking, but not only in the positive sense of the word. Inhaling the smell of the sulphur vapours, is really disgusting. Boy, was I happy to leave this historic site… (I had to inhale the smell again while visiting Yellowstone National Park, but it wasn’t that bad, the black and grizzly bears made it all worth it:) ).

Peyto Lake is another glacier-fed lake located in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies.

Before the melting of the glaciers which starts early June, the lake is dark blue. During the summer, meltwater flows into the lake which is loaded with finely ground particles of rock debris known as rock flour. These particles reflect the blue-green sector of the light spectrum resulting in the unique turquoise color of the lake.

If you look at the left side of the lake, you can see where the glacier used to be a couple of hundreds of years ago. Today, the glacier is so far retreated (losing 70% of its mass since it was first researched) that you can barely see the glacier to the far left of the picture.

Peyto Lake Panorama | Location on map

Sunwapta Falls is a waterfall of the Sunwapta River located in Jasper National Park, Canada. The water originates from the Athabasca Glacier, and volumes are higher in early summer, caused by glacial meltdown. Sunwapta means “turbulent river” in the Stoney Indian language, which is a Siouan language of the Northern Plains.

Sunwapta Falls

Photo freaks only: This picture of the falls was taken with a ND-3 filter and a Circular Polarizer stacked together resulting in -5 stops. This allowed me to take a picture of the falls with a shutter speed of 0.8 seconds at f/22.

As soon as we were in the middle of the trail loop around Lake Annette, an upcoming rain shower forced us to move a bit faster making us reach the car right when the rain started to pour down. I did find the time to stop for this picture, but as you can see compared to the previous picture, the wind already started to kick in, eliminating the reflections on the water. Except for the rain we had in Vancouver we were actually very lucky with the weather we had during our trip.

Rain over Lake Annette - Jasper N.P. | Location on map

Lake Annette is a smaller lake not far from the town of Jasper and is like most lakes in this area glacier-fed. This means that all of the water in the lake actually comes from glaciers, which gives the lakes their specific blue/green colors and makes them so crystal clear. There is a very easy paved looping trail around the lake from which the following picture was taken.

Lake Annette - Jasper N.P. | Location on map

I admit, I have a weak spot for squirrels, I can watch them for hours and I must say, I have been spoiled this trip squirrel-wise. I probably have a lot more squirrel pictures lying around, but I haven’t gone through all my pictures yet. These three pictures of different squirrels are all taken in Jasper National Park aka Squirrel Heaven (at least for me it was).

Golden-mantled Squirrel



Ground Squirrel



Red Squirrel

Another picture taken on the Icefields Parkway. The road was pretty deserted at this time which enabled me to take a picture from the middle of the road

Parkway Sunset

This was a warning which we often saw on our trip in Canada/USA.

Kris told me that there was a possibility that we saw bears during our trip. Especially driving through the Icefields Parkway. We were driving for half an hour, and we saw a few cars who stopped along the road. We were very curious, so we also stopped. Suddenly a black colored animal came out of the bush. It was a black bear.

I was amazed because the bear was only 2 to 3 meters away from us.
At first I was a little bit scared, because it is a big animal and I didn’t know a lot about their habits. But then my curiosity got the upper hand and we started taking pictures and watching it closely.

Black Bear Flower Lunch | Location on map

The first bear we saw, was tagged. I thought it wasn’t a wild animal, only to find out later they tag bears when they are obliged to tranquilize, capture and relocate one because it’s coming to close to campsites, or because it’s feeding on human garbage. But the bear remains wild.

But because we already saw one, there was hope to see some more. A few km further, Kris saw something crossing the street. Apparently mother bear was crossing it with 2 little cubs.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another picture from the Icefields Parkway, taken on the road from Banff to Jasper a bit before the Columbia Icefield.
The parkway is 230 km (143 mi) in length and is named for features such as the Columbia Icefield and numerous other glaciers.

Icefields Parkway from Above | Location on map