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If You Admire the View,
You Are a Friend Of Kananaskis
In this month's newsletter...
- Trail Care Update & Upcoming Volunteer Events
- Profiled Projects: Razor's Edge Trail and Chester Sawmill Winter Trails
- Trail Building 101 Workshops
- 2019 Kananaskis Speaker & Discover Summer Series
- News from the Board -- Partnerships
- A Friend in Need of Help
- Outdoor Ethics Principle 6: Respect Wildlife
- The Critters of K-Country: Mourning Cloak Butterfly
Trail Care Update & Upcoming Events
by Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director
It's been a great trail care month - hosting 8 volunteer trail care sessions and one Trail Building 101 workshop. We are planning for a busy August that will focus on the Razor's Edge, Chester-Sawmill and Prairie Creek/Powderface Creek Trail Projects. Scheduled dates are listed below, and more will be posted soon.
If you don't already have an FKC volunteer profile, and want to be kept informed on upcoming volunteer opportunities, we encourage you to set one up HERE. This is the site where you can sign up for volunteer opportunities and get added to our volunteer email list. You'll receive our WHAT'S HAPPENING communication email with all our volunteer and event updates.
Trail Care Updates
Canyon Trail Restoration - July 6, 12, 14, 21, 23
Many hands make light work! That has certainly been the case for this project. We've had a great turn out of volunteers, working hard to dismantle all 9 wrecked bridges along the former 1.8km Canyon Interpretive Trail. The wood has been piled in preparation to be removed by a large group of Cadets on July 26. Once this has been completed, the Canyon will be fully restored to its natural state.
High Rockies Trail - July 13
Building the 80km High Rockies Trail has been a multi-year project. Friends' volunteers were out on July 13 to help Alberta Parks complete one of the trail's last 100m sections They cleaned up the tread and did the final touches on the area near Lower Kananaskis Lakes next to the spillway dam.
Trail Building 101 Workshop - July 13
We hosted our first 2-hour Trail Building 101 Workshop in West Bragg Creek with 11 new keen volunteers interested in learning about trail care days, trail building terminology and basic fundamentals. We'll be hosting the next workshop on August 3 at the Canmore Nordic Centre.
Razor's Edge Trail - July 14 & 20
With over 600m of trail built in 2017-18 we got back to work and built another 80m of the 1.9km trail. This project has its fill of technical hand building which keeps things exciting!
The Friends of Kananaskis take pride in working with so many amazing volunteers.
Thank you for all your time, effort, and great energy. You Rock!
Upcoming Volunteer Trail Care Events
 Razor's Edge Trail
July 28 / Aug 10-18-24 / Sep 1-7-15-21
Like building new trails? Come work on one of Kananaskis Country's most popular trails. Join one of our weekend trail days and help build the remaining 1.2 km of the Razor's Edge trail.
SIGN UP HERE
 Chester Sawmill Winter Trails
Aug 23-25-27-30 / Sep 2-6-8-13-14
Come help add 9 km of new winter trails to the Chester-Sawmill trail system. Most of the work will include brushing overgrown old logging roads and dormant trails that used to be included in the 1990 ski system.
SIGN UP HERE
 Trail Building 101
August 3 (Canmore Nordic Centre)
Interested in learning more about volunteer trail work? Join one of our free workshops and learn all about what goes into making great trails!
SIGN UP HERE
Profiled Projects
by Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director
RAZOR'S EDGE TRAIL
The Razor's Edge Trail is one of the most technical trails in the Bow Valley and considered a crown jewel for mountain biking in Kananaskis Country. Hikers have long enjoyed the route for its stellar views and rugged terrain as it winds along McConnell Ridge. In recent years, the trail has evolved into a popular mountain bike trail for advanced riders who are drawn to its highly technical nature.
Razor’s Edge is accessed from the Heart Creek Day Use Area by following the Quaite Valley Connector trail east, then following the Quaite Valley trail to the Prairie View/Jewell Pass Junction. Razor’s Edge branches left off Prairie View approximately 450 m from the junction, weaving in and out of Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park and Public Lands.
Although popular, this trail is undesignated/unsanctioned which means it is not formally recognized or maintained by Alberta Environment Parks (AEP). In 2017, AEP, the Friends of Kananaskis Country and the Canmore Area Mountain Bike Association partnered to address the trail’s use, safety, and options to formally designate this multi-use trail. For example, the existing Razor’s Edge alignment descends a steep slope off McConnell Ridge to Highway 1. One of the key elements to completing this trail is building a new 1.9 km section of trail that will direct users off McConnell ridge and offer a loop route back to the Quaite Valley Connector trail (and avoid travel along the highway ditch and shoulder).
 The new trail section is primarily descending, with a few short climbing sections to enable the trail to traverse across the slope and utilize natural features. The point at which this new trail leaves the original trail was carefully chosen to allow users to experience the majority of the technical sections that Razor’s is famous for. The new trail aligns with the style and character of the original trail, and will enhance the user’s experience. This phase of the project is critical to provide users with a better quality, longer and more enjoyable trail experience over the original line and offers a safer route back to the Quaite Valley Connector trail.
We've completed 600 m of trail (yellow line on map) and we're aiming to build 500 m in 2019 (within purple circle on map).
If you like building new trails, you will really enjoy working on this project which has a flare of slab and technical terrain, grade variation, and interesting flow.
Schedule trail days included: July 28 / Aug 10-18-24 / Sep 1-7-15-21
SIGN UP HERE
CHESTER SAWMILL WINTER TRAILS
The Chester-Sawmill trails area is located in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, approximately 43 km southwest of Canmore and 140 km from Calgary. The Friends of Kananaskis and Alberta Parks worked on developing a CHESTER-SAWMILL WINTER TRAIL ENHANCEMENT PLAN in 2016. This plan included adding an additional 12 km of winter trails to the existing Chester-Sawmill winter trail system (dashed lines on below map). Ample snowfall makes this a great destination for snowshoeing, light touring on skis, and winter fatbiking.
The first of the new trails opened in 2018 (red circle on below map). Numerous volunteers spent multiple days brushing the trail out. It's a beautiful 3 km loop with 80 m height gain, an easy rolling walk through a forest with views of Mt. Murray and Mt. Smith-Dorrien across the valley.
The Migratory Birds Convention Act is a Canadian law established in 1917 which contains regulations to protect migratory birds, their eggs, and their nests. In our region, the act is primarily in effect from approx. April 15 to Aug 15, but dates can vary season to season. Considering this project consists of brushing shrubs, we have had to work around the Act's effective dates. With the nesting season being later this year, Alberta Parks ecologist have given us the 'okay' to commence our project on August 23. This leave us with a short window of time to work on this project, which has been the case over the last two years, especially when the snow comes early.
We still have lots of work ahead of us to finish this project. So let's make the most of our short window and get to work on Friday, August 23 with the goal to complete this project by the end of September. That means these new trails will need your help to get all brushed up before next winter. Most of the work will include brushing overgrown old logging roads and dormant trails that used to be included in the 1990 ski system.
Scheduled trail days: Aug 23-25-27-30 / Sep 2-6-8-13-14
SIGN UP HERE
Trail Building 101 Workshop - Aug 3
by Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director
Interested in learning more about volunteer trail work?
Join one of our FREE Trail Building 101 Workshops and learn all about what goes into making great trails! These 2-hour outdoor sessions are for anyone new to trail building who is interested in learning the basics of what goes into building and maintaining multi-use trails.
As an introduction to trail stewardship, we’ll cover key principles of sustainable trail design and best practices for trail maintenance and repair. You’ll enjoy some time outside, initiate your trail stewardship skills and come away with a whole new perspective on Kananaskis Country’s trails!
SIGN UP HERE
2019 Kananaskis Speaker & Discover Summer Series
by Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director
 The 2019 summer Kananaskis Speaker and Discovery Series in partnership with Alberta Parks offers a variety of presentation topics and discovery events at the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park Discovery Centre. Next up: OWLS OF KANANASKIS with Provincial Wildlife Biologist Gord Court, Friday August 9 @ 2 PM at the Peter Lougheed Discovery Centre. You don’t want to miss Gord and his feathered friends! Explore the various species of Owls in Kananaskis and get the unique opportunity to see a live Grey Owl Chick!
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A black wolf on a morning prowl. -- Photo courtesy of Alberta Environment and Parks
News from the Board -- Partnerships
By Derek Ryder, Co-Chair
It has been a gratifying June and July for our organization, as we have been tackling a major project that Nancy mentioned above: the decommissioning of the Canyon Interpretive Trail. While operationally, that project had made for an interesting variation on the kind of work we do, it really is significant from our perspective as a connection between two groups that provide critical support to Kananaskis Country – ourselves, and the Bow Valley Volunteer Stewards.
You can see here on Alberta Parks’ website some of the ways you can volunteer to give back in K-Country. When you read the description there of who does what, you can imagine there could be some degree of overlap, and the Canyon project is clearly one of those types of projects. There are others; we interface with the ecology team and their volunteers often, and do some environmental monitoring as well. But cleaning up messes associated with trails is within the purview of both the Stewards and the Friends.
The Stewards operate under a very different “business model” than the Friends, however. The Stewards are co-managed by the fabulous team of Conservation Officer Melanie Pachkowski, and Marie-Pierre Chappeland of Alberta Parks. Stewards ALWAYS work under the direct on-site management of Parks staff, and usually under the direct supervision of a Conservation Officer; MP is there virtually every Steward workday, and Melanie is there for many days (if you want to have “face time” with a Conservation Officer to understand their role and challenges, join the Stewards). Most of the Stewards work projects are identified and prioritized by the Conservation Officer team. This is a very different model than the Friends, which operates independently of Parks under a Cooperating Agreement with them.
Having projects to do in partnership with the Stewards is another way to fulfill the Friends mission of:
Building a community of volunteers and partners to maintain the ecological integrity and recreational use of Kananaskis Country by engaging in trail care, stewardship, education, and research.
 Working with the Stewards and their eager band of volunteers is all about building community and embracing the power of having multiple organizations collaborating towards a common goal. On most of the days, there were Friends and Stewards members working side-by-side. On one of the days, the Stewards brought in not Friends partners, but a phalanx of 30 Army Cadets – eager, strong, disciplined young women and men for whom hard work appears to be just a normal day.
Building partnerships and community is what the Friends do, and we are always pleased to work with the Stewards or any other group that shares our vision of:
A Kananaskis Country of exquisite natural and cultural landscapes enjoyed by present and future generations.
A Friend in need of help
My Co-Chair Ed Engstrom's daughter, Carol, was in a severe bicycle accident near Kelowna on the morning of June 20th. She sustained major injuries and underwent multiple surgeries (including a partial amputation) at the hospital in Kelowna to stabilize her bone fractures.
Carol has now been transferred to Calgary Foothills hospital and is now in the the Brain Injury Recovery Pathway unit where she is in stable condition. She is beginning to wake up, moving her fingers, making eye contact, and smiling. Her husband and two children are with her.
Friends and family have set up a couple of ways to support Carol though her recovery. If you would like to donate you can do so through GoFund Me
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Outdoor Ethics Principle #6: Respect Wildlife
6th in a series by Derek Ryder, Director of Communications
Part 1 of this series introduced the concepts of Leave No Trace Canada, and noted the 7 principles of Leave No Trace. So far, I’ve covered Planning Ahead, Travelling on Durable Surfaces, Proper Waste Disposal, Leaving what you Find and Minimizing Campfire Impacts. The sixth of these principles is “ Respect Wildlife”.
 As a volunteer Wildlife Ambassador with Alberta Parks and Bow Valley Wildsmart, I spend at least 20 days a year helping hundreds of people, every day I’m out, understand how to recreate respectfully and safely with wildlife. I help them understand that we make noise in the wilderness not to scare wildlife off, but to alert them of our presence, enabling the wildlife to make choices about what to do because we’re there. Wildlife – and bears in particular – may not change what they’re up to as a result of this, which is about as respectful as we can hope for when we walk, bike, run, ride, ski or do anything else in their space.
A way to think about making noise in the wilderness is to ask the question: if you’re sitting in your bedroom with the door closed, do you like people just barging in? Your teenage kids get this; the answer is an emphatic NO. They want you to knock first. Yelling “Yo, bear” is the simplest way we “knock”.
 Respect for wildlife from an ethical perspective means we recognize it is their space, not ours. We have extirpated most wildlife from our cities and other places we live; the rest of the space is theirs -- the living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms of the wildlife. Our Parks, and even our Public Lands, are managed to enable our animals have a space to live.
This leads to basic goals with wildlife in the wilderness:
- Observe from a respectful distance. A good rule of thumb is that if any wildlife reacts to your presence by changing their behaviour – runs away or even comes closer – you’re too close. Want better pictures? Get a bigger lens, and stay back. Binoculars are awesome.
- Choose where and when to go influenced by wildlife warnings and closures. Understand where animals are likely to be, and how they are likely to be living at any given moment. For instance, when you know bears are down in the valleys munching on berries, it’s a great time to go up high where the food is not as good. Understanding what makes good elk calving or rutting space, and choosing to avoid it in season, is respectful behaviour.
- Choose when to go. An increasing number of people are doing night hikes for sunrises and sunset. Research clearly shows most wildlife “adapts” to our diurnal movements by being more active when we are not there. Our continual presence makes it harder for animals to adapt, and some trails that have people on them 24 hrs a day essentially have no wildlife on them.
- Leave animals alone, and don’t interfere with their lives. Don’t try to rescue baby animals (they probably don’t need rescuing), nor feed them, nor let them get near your food. Don't disturb them when they're eating. If you see one in distress, contact a Conservation Officer.
- Leave room for animals to get to water. There are lots of reasons not to set up campsites near lake shores, but even picnicking near a shoreline can affect an animal’s ability to get the water it needs to survive (look at Chester Lake surrounded by picnickers as a great example of behaviour blockers). It is especially important to leave access to water at dawn, dusk and night.
With thousands of kilometres of trails in K-Country, you have lots of opportunities to make thoughtful, respectful choices of where and when to go, and what to do when you're there.
 That ground squirrel trying to get into your backpack associates people with food; we are the ultimate purveyors of animal “junk food” – high calorie, low nutrition (to them) edibles. You can’t survive on junk food, and neither can they. It’s not unreasonable to stomp the ground and chase them away, rather than letting them become bolder, and letting them learn that being that close to humans creates food rewards. And besides: they bite.
 A great example being respectful of animals is paying attention to and obeying voluntary closures. There can be no better example of this than the now-decommissioned Mt. Indefatigable trail. There’s a giant sign at that trail’s start (pictured at left) – you literally can’t get up there without going past it – asking you not to hike it. Recent research by the Alberta Parks' ecology team clearly shows the criticality of the movement corridor in that space. The upper slopes of Mt. Indefatigable are meadows spectacularly full of bear food.
However, despite being closed for 14 years, traffic on that trail is increasing, likely driven by social media posting. A check on Google Trends shows over 2,000 searches in the last 90 days alone for information on the hike. A scan of Instagram will show hundreds of recent photos taken from the trail (including folks walking by the sign with a “thumbs up”); many “influencers” with literally tens of thousands of followers are posting photos from up there. Two weeks ago, an entire wedding party went up there for engagement photos.
 When you ask these folks why they ignore the closure sign, their answers are often quite sad. Many argue that if it really needed to be closed, Parks would close it, so the closure isn't "real". Some argue there are lots of places for bears to live, and try to extend that logic to suggest the sign means we shouldn’t go into the wilderness at all, anywhere. One posted this:
"I went with 13 others on Canada Day a year ago. Came across a bear and because we all yelled, he turned around."
This is pretty much the antithesis of respectful behaviour. The bear was just living their life until people appeared and chased him off, possibly off a food source — in a space where the people were asked not to go in the first place. In a space specifically identified as prime bear habitat, people making poor choices stressed the bear.
We can make choices that respect wildlife. We can “learn about wildlife through quiet observation”, as the Leave No Trace principles suggest. We can stay back when we know they're there, give them room and try not to disturb them, rather than chasing them away. We can leave no trace that will influence their behaviour, allowing them to live their lives as nature intends.
And if you understand how to live respectfully with wildlife, you can help educate others, and be your own influencer of good behaviour. In that way, we all have a role we can play in respecting wildlife.
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The Critters of K-Country: Mourning Cloak Butterflies
34th in a series by Derek Ryder, IGA Interpretive Guide
Kananaskis Country is home to a wide variety of creatures, great and small. Big ones, like bears and elk, get a lot of attention. In this series, I’m going to look at some of the ones we pay less attention to.
 K-Country is home to almost 20 species of butterflies, and so far, I’ve only written about one (the Titania’s Flitterary, in July 2017). Summer is butterfly season, so why not look at the biggest and most obvious of K-Country’s Lepidoptera, the Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa).
This butterfly is very wide ranging, and can be found across North America and Eurasia, into northern South America, and even Japan. They prefer cold, mountainous areas, are protected by law in Switzerland and Austria, and have special status in the Czech Republic. They are known as Mourning Cloak almost everywhere; this name came from the view that it looked like a girl who, disliking having to be in mourning and wearing dark clothes, let a few inches of bright dress show under her cloak. Matching its Mourning Cloak name, it's easy to identify: dark brown, almost velvety wings, bordered by a line of blue dots and an edging of yellow. However, in Great Britain, it’s been called the Camberwell Beauty since 1748, after the first sightings in Camberwell, south of London.
 We talk about summer being butterfly season, but in fact, this is not a butterfly you’re likely to see a lot in the summer. They’re out in great numbers in the spring, as they are non-migratory in K-Country. Instead, they overwinter as adults, tucking themselves under the bark of trees or in tree cavities while in winter hibernation – in their case, using “cryo-preservation,” filling their veins with a thick sugar syrup that can't freeze. In the early spring, they will sun themselves, using their dark wings to absorb the sun’s warmth. But… they can also shiver, just like us, and raise their body temperatures by 5-10 C° in a matter of minutes.
But uniquely, they hibernate twice a year. When temperatures turn hot and the air turns dry in the summer, they can go into a summer hibernation known as aestivation (your new “Word of the Day”). Mourning Cloaks that live on higher mountains in cooler, wetter places, may not need to aestivate, and may stay active.
 And if aestivation isn’t neat enough, they also exhibit diapause. This is an entire suspension of development and growth, triggered by environmental conditions. So their eggs can stop developing, or the caterpillars can stop eating and maturing, or the pupae can just stop the transition into a butterfly. When September comes around, all of these life cycle processes just start back up again. They literally have the ability to hit the “snooze” button at every stage of their entire life.
We think of butterflies as pollinators, but Mourning Cloaks really aren’t. Their primary food isn’t pollen, it’s sap from aspen and poplar trees. They are rarely seen nectaring on flowers, preferring the sugary residue of fallen fruits and aphids. Their caterpillars primarily eat the leaves of willows, wild roses, alders, birches and poplars.
 They get predated by birds, frogs and other critters, so, uniquely, they have defence mechanisms (other than just folding their wings and looking like tree bark, which they’re good at). They’ll group together and fly at attacking birds. They can make a loud clicking sound when they flap their wings.
Mourning Cloaks are another K-Country critter that benefit from fire. In their case, fire opens up the forests, making it easier to fly around, and enables the spread of the deciduous trees they depend on for survival. Mourning cloaks generally set up a territory of up to 1 km square, but are quite capable of flying long distances.
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Your Donations are Always Appreciated and Needed
We are pleased to recognize the contributions of the Calgary Foundation, The Auxilium Foundation, Alberta Government - Community Initiatives Program, Banff Canmore Community Foundation, Alberta TrailNet, Patagonia Calgary/Banff (Elements Inc.), Kananaskis Improvement District, The Dr. Janice L. Pasieka Foundation, Kananaskis Lakes Association, and the many individual donors and clubs & organizations who support our work.
There are many ways to express your gratitude for Kananaskis Country and we are always grateful for contributions that help us maintain our programs and operations. We provide charitable receipts for donations over $25. You can donate directly by mail or through the donations link on our website.
Donations made through CanadaHelps now have the option to include a dedication designation for your contribution.
Friends of Kananaskis Country
201-800 Railway Avenue
Canmore, AB T1W 1P1
403-678-5593
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