Poia Caves

I was stumbling around the net this afternoon and came upon Scott Wickizer's homepage. He has quite a few good descriptions of things down in Glacier. In particular, I like his page on Poia Lake Caves.

For more information on caving, there is a guidebook to caves in the area. You can also pick up an adventure topo map to southern alberta that has rough descriptions of most everything around.

Other cave sites
Tazhike

guided caving

Suburbs

Quite a few subdivisions have been going up outside of the park in the last few years. This, despite the Nature Conservancy's rather heavy handed attempts to buy up as much park boundary land as possible.

There is Garner's Heaven On Earth Estates. There are three houses that are up, two by the river, one by the road. From what I understand there are quite a few conditions buyers have to agree to. Don't try driving the roads to have a look, access is not public. Lots are $250,000, and I hear around 6 to 8 have been sold.

Diamond Willow is located just east of the Belly River bridge. The views are great and you get a share of 40 acres at river level. There is a paved road. Lots have been going slowly siince it was first put up about 3 years ago. It looks like only 1 has been sold. Lots are about $130,000. I know there has been trouble finding well water, so one may need to be concerned with that. The front range mountains that are buried under the prairie make finding water quite difficult. On top of the bench, they have drilled well below river level, but haven't hit anything. That is likely due to an underground ridge. This means you can hit a spring 100yd away, but have nothing for yourself.

John Webster also has about 8 lots going for sale by my parent's new house just east of Diamond Willow, by the drainage of Paine Lake. These are going for $99,000. John is still digging out the ponds and prepping things. No online info is available, so perhaps I will upload a couple of shots.

Elk

The elk have been bugling the last few weeks. Today I saw them starting to clump around males. There were a number on the flats by Kootenai's old home (the road down to the Dardenelles), and a few more were by the park gate by Garner's disaster. WIth the beautiful lighting, this would be the time to burn some film.

Ghost in trouble

It looks like a new management plan for the Ghost area could spell trouble for car access. TheCMC has a petition and more information.

Treasure Island

P1010561
Originally uploaded by cgoble72.

This weekend I got dragged away from rennovations for a few hours to wander around the hump. The upper prow is turning into a treasure chest. There was quite a bit of fixed gear - which despite our best efforts still remains in place. The prow as always remains a classic. Just don't get fooled into doing the lower section.

Pesky Deer

Perhaps I am a local. When I see deer out in my front yard, the first thing I think about is my poor caragana hedge, not how pretty the scruffy looking town animals are. Of course chasing deer away from my front yard while tourists snap pictures probably isn't the best way to endear myself to park staff. Perhaps I need one of these.

Conditions Sept 23

It looks like the clouds didn't dump as much snow as one would have guessed. There is a very light sprinkinling down to the base of Sofa. The elk are out and bugling. The leaves have turned, but not fallen off. Overall I would say while cloudy, it looks to be a classic cloudy fall weekend - one of those weekends that always remind me of hikes to Wall Lake.

Yarrow-East Ridge.....again

Went back and climbed this route with Brett on Sunday again. It is an awesome alpine route and i would highly recommend it. When Dave and i climbed it back in late May, we descended down the north face into Blind Canyon. After reaching the summit this time we decided that there was to much snow to descend down the north side so we opted to try going down the south side into Yarrow Creek. There are two drainages visible from the summit. The drainage on the skiiers right looks pretty straight forward but it dumps you further up the valley. The drainage on the left requires some route finding but brings you to the road not to far up the valley. We had one short rappell which probably could have been avoided if we had cut across the creek to the skiers right just below the main cliff bands. Even at that it was still only two hours back to the truck. If anybody needs any route beta or pictures let me know.
Kudo's to Chris G. for spying the route in the first place.
Speaking of Chris G., has anybody seen him. He seems to be MIA........

Paddling Store in Lethbridge

I got an email over the summer concerning a paddling store that is slated to open in Lethbridge this fall. So far I don't have many details. They are hoping to sell canoes and kayaks. They are also planning on running rentals and lessons. I have a hard time imagining that a specialty boat shop could survive. I know awesome adventures has had a hard time selling much paddling gear, but then part of that may also have been due to some of the ways they run a number of their sales. My guess is the store will be a general sporting goods place like Wholesale outfitters. If not, it could be a garage based paddling shop.