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If You Admire the View,
You Are a Friend Of Kananaskis
In this month's newsletter...
- Trails Fest - June 10
- Health and Safety Update
- Another Successful Highway 40 Clean Up
- Volunteers in the Field - Peter Lougheed Ski Trail work
- Kananaskis Country Summer Construction Update
- News from the Board - More on Health and Safety
- Kananaskis Special Places: Sand Dunes & Sand Beaches
- Critters of K-Country - Pileated Woodpecker
Operational Update
by Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director and Tim Johnson, Program Coordinator
Save the Date for Trails Fest on June 10!
Only a few weeks to go before our flagship Spring event celebrating Kananaskis trails, people and culture! Trails Fest 2018 happens from 10 AM - 3 PM on Sunday June 10th, at the Canmore Nordic Centre. We're excited to be welcoming over 30 exhibitors and invite you to come and learn about cool trail projects, explore diverse trail-related clubs, retailers, groups and associations, and enjoy a free BBQ lunch. Tell all your friends about this fun, free and family-friendly event.
In the afternoon, we'll once again be offering some great activity workshops to get you out and experiencing the Nordic Centre's trails. Try your hand at orienteering, help keep the trails clean on a plogging excursion, learn some map reading skills, stretch the legs on a guided trail run, learn and engage in some hands-on trail building, or brush up on your bear-awareness and how to be "wildsmart" out on the trails.
Health and Safety Update
The success of Friends of Kananaskis’ programs is dependent on our volunteers and we are committed first and foremost to ensuring that all our projects prioritize the safety and well-being of participants. That's been our mantra here at the office while we worked to create our Health and Safety Manual (see below "News from the Board - More on Health and Safety" for more details).
The Manual was submitted to Alberta Parks and Environment for final review and approval on May 23. Assuming there are no major revisions required, we expect to have our 'work stop order' lifted by May 31. Once everything is signed off, we'll make it available on our website's library here. In short, the 107 page manual includes the following:
- Health and Safety Policy
- Hazard Assessment and Control
- Safe Work Practices (SWPs)
- Safe Job Procedures (SJPs)
- Organizational Rules
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
- Preventative Maintenance
- Training and Safety Meetings
- Inspections
- Investigations
- Emergency Preparedness
- Records, Forms, and Statistics
We look forward to another great season of Trail Stewardship and volunteer engagement. If at any time you have questions, feedback or something to report, please contact Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director nancy@kananaskis.org or 403-678-5593.
Keeping Kananaskis Clean & Great!
A big thank you to all the volunteers who participated in our annual Highway 40 Clean Up on May 5. Under a sunny sky, our dedicated crew of 105 volunteers cleaned 50 km in just a few hours.
Refundable cans and bottles made up about half of the garbage we collected. We were more than happy to take 1,004 aluminum cans and 341 other glass and plastic recyclables to the bottle depot to be recycled and received a bonus $136.45 refund.
Interesting things found this year: a fairly intact cucumber, golf balls, a fork, slippers, over 15 hubcaps, and gigantic elk antlers (which were, of course, left). Here’s some feedback from a few volunteers:
“It was a great day to be out in the Kananaskis - perfect weather, lots of volunteers, and a very well-organized event. The Blue Grouse was at the end of the road, and was most entertaining. He came right up to us, circled me several times and put on quite a show!”
“Today was so much fun, thank you. The kilometre between Wedge Pond and the bend south of it is so clean a person could eat off it!!!!”
“Always a great group and good organization. We found a wallet containing ID, credit cards and $110.85 in cash with a special key…(belonged to a free style skier), we handed it all in to the police”
Thanks again everyone for your help!
2018 Highway Clean Up Volunteers
Volunteers in the Field
The first week of May saw five Friends volunteers lending a hand to the Alberta Parks trail crew in Peter Lougheed Park, for some tree limbing work on the network of ski trails. These overhanging branches scratch and damage the Snowcat that's used for the ski trail grooming. The work involved trimming tree branches that hung out over the trail, 0 to 11 ft above the packed snow level, with pole saws.
Our volunteers reported a successful few days of work, highlighted by lots of time riding on the Parks snowmobile! Volunteer Trevor Wilson mentioned, " At least 50 stops of anywhere from one to seven minutes were made to cut the branches. It was like being on a UPS delivery truck."
Thanks to our volunteer crew for helping the Alberta Parks team wrap up the ski season on the PLPP trails!
Kananaskis Country Summer Construction Update
We received the following update from Alberta Parks regarding upcoming Summer projects.
Bow Valley Provincial Park
Gap Lake Day Use Area
Alberta Parks is upgrading the Gap Day Use Area by reconfiguring the access road, resurfacing the asphalt pavement, replacing the washroom, brushing existing trails, improving picnic sites and overall signage, and adding parking stalls. The project should be completed this June.
Grotto Day Use Area
Alberta Parks is upgrading the Grotto Day Use Area by formalizing parking spaces within the parking lot, including some parking spaces for users with limited mobility, resurfacing the asphalt pavement and replacing the washroom. The existing trail around portions of the pond will be upgraded as well as signage, picnic table, and benches. The project should be completed this June.
Bow River Campground
Alberta Parks will be completing upgrades to the Bow River Campground. Facility upgrades include a new comfort station, construction of 7 new walk-in tent sites and service (water and power) to 60 drive-in sites. The campground comfort station will feature power, water and sanitary services. Bow River Campground is targeted to open without water services or use of the comfort station in late June. Water services and the comfort station will become available in July.
Evan Thomas Provincial Recreation Area
Hwy 40 and Kananaskis Village Paving
Paving will occur along Highway 40 south of the Kananaskis Village intersection to the junction of Hwy 742 (Hwy 40 winter gate in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park); as well as Mount Allen Drive, Centennial Drive, Kananaskis Village and Nakiska. The paving project is scheduled for July and August. Reduced speed, one lane alternative traffic, partial parking lot closures may cause traffic disruptions.
Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park - Spray Valley
Ha Ling Peak Trail Realignment
Ha Ling Peak hiking trail is one of the most popular trails in Kananaskis Country and over the years, the hiking trail has degraded substantially due to erosion from very high use. To prevent further trail degradation and increase public safety, Alberta Parks will realign the trail this summer. To support construction of the new hiking trail alignment, rock blasting and tree removal are required. To ensure the safety of hikers and climbers on Ha Ling Peak, Alberta Parks will implement occasional full mountain closures. Alberta Parks will not permit access to hiking and climbing routes on Ha Ling Peak during the closures. Occasional closures will be implemented from July to October.
Elbow Sheep Wildland Provincial Park
Tombstone Backcountry Campground
The Tombstone Backcountry Campground will be expanded from 10 sites to 15 sites. The campground will be reconfigured to separate equestrian and hiker use. There will be 4 separate equestrian sites with fire pits and hitching rails. The hiker sites will have a communal cooking area with fire pits and picnic tables that will be located ~100 m from the 11 tent sites. In addition, two new pit toilets will be installed.
Highwood Junction Area
Sentinel Day Use Area
As part of the 2013 flood recovery effort, Sentinel Day Use Area repairs are scheduled to occur this summer. Equestrian parking will be accommodated on the east end, day use parking on the west end supplemented with formal picnic sites. Flood mitigation will be installed along the Highwood River to protect the day use area and picnic sites from future floods. The two washrooms will be replaced with a new 4-stall building.
Peter Lougheed Provincial Park
Boulton Campground
Alberta Parks will construct an addition loop (Loop E) with 34 fully serviced campsites at Boulton Campground. 6 sites will be provided which meet full accessibility standards. Some of the Boulton Creek trails as well at the Boulton Campground Store upper parking lot will be close during construction. The project may be completed by September.
Elbow Valley Provincial Park
Cobble Flats, Forgetmenot Pond and Little Elbow Trailhead
Alberta Parks is finishing off 2013 flood projects in the Elbow Valley. Cobble Flats, Forgetmenot Pond and Little Elbow Trailhead day use areas are being upgraded. Due to the removal of the picnic sites at Elbow Falls, sites have been added to Cobble Flats and Forgetmenot Pond Day Use. Cobble Flats will get additional picnic sites and a new picnic shelter. The access road and some picnic site trails are now paved. Forgetmenot Pond entry/exit will be reconfigured to improve traffic flow. The site will get additional parking, picnic sites and a paved pathway. The Little Elbow Trailhead parking is being expanded with separate equestrian and hiker parking lots. These day use areas will be open to the public this July. Expect occasional restricted access to some trailheads (such as Nihahi Ridge) during the construction window.
Ghost Reservoir Provincial Recreation Area
Ghost Reservoir Boat Launch Extension
Alberta Parks is upgrading the Ghost reservoir boat launch to accommodate the low late spring/early summer water levels. The south side of the parking lot and boat launch will be closed during construction. The site should be open to the public this July.
For information, call: Kananaskis Information Line @ 1- 403-678-0760
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Wolf selfie. Photo courtesy Alberta Environment & Parks
News from the Board -- More on HS&E
By Derek Ryder, Chair
In February of this year, in this column, I mentioned that the Board, Nancy and Trail Care Subcommittee were working on Occupational Health and Safety issues. The Trail Care Subcommittee has the lead on this because the Board reconfirmed in our January 18, 2018 Board Meeting that they were the Subcommittee which had responsibility for all aspects of the safety of the Society. They had commenced work on our own internal Health and Safety Manual that built on the strong safety policies and programs we already had in place. By mid-April, we were working on building new processes such as Hazard Identification and Near Miss reporting, and considering upgrades to our procedures for working in remote areas out of cell coverage.
We, and all other volunteer organizations in the province that support Alberta Parks, were caught a bit by surprise in early May when a province-wide Stop Work Order was issued for all volunteer work. A Stop Work Order had been issued back in October 2017 for all high-risk work, but in May 2018 it was extended to all work. In essence, our understanding is that some spot checks suggested that the identification of high-, medium-, and low-risk work had inconsistencies. There was concern that without a disciplined examination of the risk for every activity undertaken by volunteers, the identification of some activities as high-risk was being missed.
For most organizations, all that was needed was to use an Alberta Parks mandated process to do a Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment for their activities. Once this was done, and the Hazard ID’s signed off on by Parks staff and reviewed by the volunteers, exemptions from the Stop Work Order were issued and work could recommence. This was the process that occurred in other organizations I volunteer for, including the Wildlife Ambassadors, the Ecology research team, and the Kananaskis Stewards.
For the Friends… not so much. Due to the nature of the work we do, and perhaps because of the processes we use to do it, we were in a different category of volunteer organization and had much, much more we were expected to do. Alberta Parks provided us with a mandatory framework we had to comply with, and although virtually all of it was already in place, we needed what we had to be put into that framework. Accordingly, despite having no high risk activities, the policies we had in place needed re-writing, the material we already had created needed to be re-done and compiled into a specific format, our respectful workplace policies needed to be incorporated, and a specific manual needed to be built.
We couldn’t have done it in the timeframe we did without the help from our friends at the Greater Bragg Creek Trails Association. And we certainly couldn’t have done it without the heroic efforts of Nancy and Board members Ed Engstrom, Dave Nielson and others.
In the end, I’m certain that we, as an organization, and you, as volunteers within that organization, are better off for all of this. While very little we do will change, you will notice some things are a bit different this year; likely the biggest thing you’ll see are changes to the morning tailgate meeting when we start our work, including the paperwork.
But our underlying philosophy and beliefs do not change from what it already states in our existing policy:
The Friends of Kananaskis performs work that has inherent risks to it. However, the Friends believe all work can be done safely and without injury.
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Kananaskis Special Places: Sand Dunes and Sand Beaches
A re-print of Part 2 in a series by Derek Ryder, Director of Communications
When this article was first published in our October 2012 newsletter, only 79 subscribers saw it. There're 1,000 of you now, and given the fabulous May long weekend weather, it seemed like a good idea to re-run it. - Ed.
The greater Kananaskis area protects numerous special places, and in this series of articles, I’m going to take you to a number of my favourites. Some of these hide, and some are in the open but get passed by. All are worth exploring if you want to see the unique bits of our beloved space.
So it’s the middle of summer, and your kids are clamouring to go play on a sandy beach. Or maybe your mind is turning to thoughts of the endless sands of Maui, or Mexico. Or perhaps you’re thinking of a trip to the magnificent coastal dunes of Oregon. Well, why not just go to K-Country?
Okay, love K-Country as I do, even I can’t tell you that our sandy beaches can hold a candle to Maui’s. Or our dunes with Oregon’s. But did you even know we had sand dunes? Most people don’t. Our dunes hide in plain sight, with the easiest to find being in Bow Valley Provincial Park. They are unmarked, unsigned, and there’s not really even a trail leading to them. But they start less than 50 m off a paved road, and if you’re willing to put up with a 5 minute walk in a meadow, you can get to the dune pictured at the top of this article.
 It’s the largest but by no means the only sand dune in this area of the park. Many are growing over and stabilizing; lots of native plants like living in sandy soils. Another dune in the photo to the right used to be bigger but is getting heavily vegetated.
Note, too, the very old snow fence in this photo. I suspect (and it’s only a guess) that it was put there a long time ago to collect sand, not snow.
Now, why are there dunes there, and how would a snow fence help? There are lots of ways to build a sand dune. These happen to be aeolian lacustrian dunes. Them's fancy words meaning the sand blew in here (aeolian) from dried up lake deposits (lacustrian). Where the heck from, and how?
Well, the Bow River carries a lot of sediments, and where the water flows fast, small sediments like sand are carried with it. Where the river slows down to a crawl (say in a lake or on the flats), the smaller sediments including the sand drop out. High water in the spring and early summer give way to low water in the fall; the deposited sands are then out of the water, and they dry out in the sun. Then the ever-present winds blow the sand out of the valley. The wind slows down a bit as it leaves the valley and hits the prairie, and it does so at the west end of Bow Valley Provincial Park. A combination of this and a bit of topography causes the sand to drop out of the wind and start collecting. The snow fence causes sand to drop out in the wind just like it causes snow to drop.
 Most likely this sand came from the Lac Des Arcs area, and likely the dunes built when Lac Des Arcs was still an active part of the Bow River and the lake basically dried up in the fall. There’s now a dam separating the direct river flow from the lake ( clearly visible in the photo), built to control... dust (which is blowing sand) in the community of Lac Des Arcs by keeping the lake level more constant. The dunes don’t show signs of much new material arriving, and so the vegetation is winning. I’m betting that the little dam is effectively killing the dunes by cutting off the primary source of sand. So come see them before the forest reclaims them.
They’re easy to find. Drive to the west end of Bow Valley Provincial Park, and park at the Many Springs Trailhead (note exposed bits of sand in the forest beside the road as you get close to the parking area). Walk out to the road and continue west about 50 m, passing under the powerline, then turn left into the meadow before you get to the forest. Pick up a weak and sandy trail that curves right and drops you into the first of the dunes. Then follow the now very sandy path through stabilizing sand towards the river to get to the bigger dunes. Sand here goes all the way down to the riverbank, and you can poke around and find several bits of sand outcropping. Be careful if you head right in the forest towards the road near the river’s edge, as the bank cliffs get unstable.
I freely admit that I first learned about these dunes in Gillean Daffern’s excellent little book “Short Walks For Enquiring Minds”. Her 4th Edition, Volume 3 Trails Guide, hike #1 also talks of other dunes in a sand forest up in the Aura Creek area of the Ghost/Waiparous. I haven’t made it there yet, as access is via a well-used ATV trail from the Waiparous Creek PRA. But I will one day. I’m not sure why that sand is there, and it’s worthy of investigation.
 The easiest to access sand beach in K-Country is also aeolian and lacustrian in nature. It’s at the Barrier Lake boat launch ramp at the Barrier Lake Day Use Area ( not at the dam; about 2 km further south than the dam along Highway 40. Look for the day use area & boat rental signs). Go down to the ramp and walk along the beach to the left. The sand beach here is about 200 m long, and the sand itself is great and clean with very few rocks (though there is some deadfall and driftwood on the shore).
 There’s the odd sand cliff showing that the forest in here is just one giant pile of sand, as you can see in the photo to the right.
Again here, sand was historically deposited by the ebb and flow of the Kananaskis River, probably sourced in the sandy flats that are now the start of Barrier Lake; these are often visible from Highway 40 when the lake level is low. As you drive south down Highway 40 here, you cross over a big bump that is usually referred to as Barrier Hill. All this beach sand was blown down the Kananaskis Valley and settled in a wind eddy in the lee of Barrier Hill.
I admit that this isn’t Maui. Or Oregon. But on a hot summer day, playing in the sand in K- Country is fun for kids of all ages.
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The Critters of K-Country: Pileated Woodpecker
28th in a series by Derek Ryder, IGA Apprentice 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.
 If you ever see one, a Pileated is hard to not pay attention to. They're just huge, and they have this massive red crest that makes them look like what everyone thinks a woodpecker should look like. Hence, they were the model for the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker.
Big bird = big appetite. A Pileated's favourite meal are the big black carpenter ants that eat out old dead trees. Pileateds can actually hear the ants inside the tree. To get at the ants, they drill massive holes -- as big as your fist -- into the tree, and then use their long sticky tongue to lick the ants out.
 One showed up in my neighbourhood last fall and took a liking to the dogwood berries growing in my neighour's yard. While they love ants, they'll also eat nuts and seeds, and any other bug that lives in trees (like pine beetle larvae).
Pileateds are not terribly common. A nesting pair requires a large area of forest, typically 40 ha or more, to feed and breed. Their breeding roost is  an even bigger hole they drill, up to 60 cm deep and 20 cm wide, and they really like gutting poplars and cottonwoods to do their nesting, often meaning their nests are near rivers. They nest in mid-spring, and have 3-5 chicks that fledge in early July.
 Normally, you'll see the evidence of their tree-demolition work ( that's their doing, with my iPhone for scale, pictured at left), or hear a Pileated, long before seeing one. Their laughing call is loud can be heard a long way away. It also likes to drum, which other woodpeckers (including Flickers) do not. Their drumming is against wood, so sounds much different than the deep drumming sound of a grouse.
News Flash!
Last month we wrote in this space about the Gray Jay, which used to be called the Canada Jay until 1957. The American Ornithological Society voted this month on a proposal to restore the name Canada Jay to the bird, and it was 9-1 in favour! So as of the July 2018 official pronouncement, once again, it's a Canada Jay -- just in time for Canada Day!
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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, FortisAlberta, TransAlta, Banff Canmore Community Foundation, Town of Canmore, Alberta TrailNet, OnwardUP, Alberta Apparel, Husky Energy, 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, operations and restore flood damaged trails. Friends of Kananaskis Country is a registered charity in good standing and we provide charitable receipts for donations over $25.00. You can reach us directly by mail at the address below, through the donations link on our website, through ATB Cares, or CanadaHelps. Thank you for your support!
Friends of Kananaskis Country
201-800 Railway Avenue
Canmore, AB T1W 1P1
403-678-5593
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