Near Canmore Alberta, a gorgeous seven-kilometre trail can be found which goes through canyons, along a river bed, past historic pictographs, and into a mountain valley.
I visited this scenic spot during spring after all the snow had melted from the ground. The first 500 meters of the trail was an easy walk. The trail was pretty wide and well maintained
Near the start of the trail, it passes by the Baymang Mineral Processing Facility. At this site magnesite (magnesium carbonate) ore is brought here to be crushed, milled, and heat treated to form Magnesium Oxide, which is used in wastewater treatment, animal feed, and fireplace brick. The products produced here are distributed throughout North America.
The factory site seemed very clean, but the noise it produced was annoying. Thankfully it wasn’t long before it began to muffle, and then disappeared altogether as I approached the Grotto Canyon Creek.
Since it was still spring, and the nighttime temperatures reached freezing levels, the creek was still frozen, which allowed me to walk along the river bed, right through the middle of the canyon. The quality of the ice wasn’t consistent. Parts of the river felt like walking on packed snow, and other parts felt like artificial ice.
My favourite part of the hike occurred near one of the bends in the creek. One of the rock walls contains pictographs. Not much is known about the origin of the pictographs, or who created them.
There appears to be a thin, transparent layer of granite-like stone, called travertine, that has slowly built up over the pictographs, protecting them from erosion. Since this process takes a long time to occur, we can determine that the pictographs are at least a couple of centuries old.
Some of the pictographs at this site have faded to the point where they are unrecognizable, and appear as nothing more than a reddish-orange blob. The ones photoed above were in the best condition.
The photographs include three triangular beings, one holding a staff, while wearing some type of headdress. At least two of the beings appear to have only one leg.
From the pictograph site, the cliffs begin to grow dramatically in height. The further along the canyon I hiked, the taller the cliffs got.
After rounding one last bend, the cliffs suddenly fade away, and I entered in to a large valley between the mountains. Here a small cave can be found. From the ground the blackness of the cave’s interior makes it look like it extends back forever. However, after venturing up to the cave, It actually doesn’t go any further back than what the eye can see from the ground.
The view of the cave from the ground was more spectacular than the view of the ground from the cave. While looking at the cave from below, the hill that it is situated in appears to menacingly grow out of the surrounding landscape, with this dark pit in the middle. From above, however, its true nature is revealed, and its height and depth don’t seem as marvelous.
