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2018 Trail Report
by Nancy Ouimet, Executive Director

 

It's that rewarding time of year when we get to tally all our volunteer trail care days and hours. I'm always amazed at the dedicated time and effort volunteers contribute to improving Kananaskis Country trails and the work they've accomplished. We are grateful for our partnership with Alberta Parks which enables our Trail program to offer these unique opportunities. A BIG THANK YOU and pat on the back to all the volunteers for their hard work - you are super stars!

Wolves gotta eat, moose gotta run. Photo courtesy Alberta Environment & Parks

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As I have written here several times in the past, in 2016, the Board decided to re-visit the Vision and Mission of the organization. I’m pleased to announce that a major milestone has been reached this month with the adoption of a new Mission for the organization.

You may recall the previous Mission statement:

In the January, 2018 newsletter, I dissected that statement into it’s parts, helping you understand how it has helped guide us and drive our activities for the last 6 years. But I also noted its limitations.

Our new Mission statement is:

“Building a community…” is a better reflection of what we’re trying to do. Yes, we still operate under a Cooperating Agreement with Alberta Parks, but we’re bigger than that agreement. “Community” as written in our previous Mission was whom we cooperated with; we felt we had a much more proactive role regarding creating that community than to just cooperate with them.

“…of volunteers and partners…” Since before even writing our previous mission in 2013, we have strived to build partnerships with like-minded organizations -- Greater Bragg Creek Trail Association springs to mind, but so do many others, including the Town of Canmore and groups like CAMBA (the Canmore Area Mountain Bike Alliance) and MMTBS (Moose Mountain Trail Bike Society). And we felt it important to include specific mention of you, our volunteers, who make it all happen.

“…to maintain the ecological integrity and recreational use of Kananaskis Country…” Ecological integrity is a critical focus of Parks Canada in the National Park system, and is a defined term that speaks to ensuring core ecological processes that made and shaped the landscape – such as fire – are maintained. The Board believes and supports this concept. But recreational use is also key. K-Country is not a “look but don’t touch” museum. Both elements are important to ensuring that K-Country’s magnificence is maintained for generations to come.

“…by engaging in trail care, stewardship, education, and research”. We deliberately wanted to be specific of the areas where we would focus, and we closed the missing gap we had identified regarding research activities, which we feel we have the capacity to support. Although we know we are not the ones who define how the K-Country land base is to be stewarded – that’s up to the various land managers – our job is to help them with stewardship.

We are thrilled to have closed the Mission portion of this review. It took a long time, and a lot of Board attention and effort over the last 28 months, but we believe it was worth every moment. We look forward to how it will drive our conversations and organization going forward.

• Aster Lake (and coincidentally Fossil Falls) and Three Isle Lake set up by the Borgeau Thrust;
• Rummel, Chester, Headwall Lakes and James Walker Creek, all set up by the Sulphur Mountain Thrust. Those giant Elephant Rocks just above Chester Lake are Mount Head, and are full of fossils.
• Sparrowhawk Tarns, Galatea Creek, Grizzly Creek, Opal Ridge, Elpoca Creek and Elbow Lake on the Rundle Thrust;
• The Mt. Wintour scramble on the Lewis Thrust;
• Pigeon Mountain, Skogan Pass, Old Baldy, Evan-Thomas Creek and Tombstone Pass on the McConnell Thrust.

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.
 
When you think of thrushes, the omnipresent Robin is the king of the family. But robins have many cousins, including Hermit Thrush, Varied Thrush (which we wrote about in March 2015), and the Swainson’s Thrush.
 
I hardly ever see Swainson’s, but this year I’ve seen them everywhere, and my yard in particular has been full of them this fall migration season. Sadly, I’ve lost 2 to window strikes.
 
Swainson’s are fairly shy and not often seen. They are primarily heard, basically the first bird to make noise in the morning and the last to stop at night. During summer it’s a tree dweller. In migration it becomes much more of a ground feeder, targeting more berries than it’s usual diet of beetles, flies, ants and caterpillers.
 
They nest in conifers not too far off the ground. They lay eggs in the spring, and it takes just 25 days from laying to fledging. They spend their winters from southern Mexico all the way to northern Argentina. According to Ben Gadd, numbers of these and other neotropical migrants are in steep decline due to habitat losses from forestry practices and other issues.