A Little Hike in David Thompson Country

This year Canada Day, July 1st, fell on a Tuesday.  It seems that most of the working people got Monday June 30th off instead.  I took a quick run into town around lunch time on the 30th.  The highway was like a parade, and the parking lot in town at the gas station/convenience store was full.  I picked up a case of beer and headed back home.  I spent the rest of the day working around the property, cutting and splitting wood.  There was a lot of noise and traffic that I could hear, but fortunately it was relatively quiet up at our place.

On Tuesday, the actual Canada Day holiday, I headed out for a drive at about 1:00 in the afternoon.  I was hopeful that many of the weekend people would be heading for home by then.  I was somewhat correct, but the highway was still busy, but more so in an east bound direction.  Early in the afternoon, as I made my way west on the David Thompson Highway past Abraham Lake, the trailheads were all very busy.

I headed out past the Kootenay Plains out to the Spreading Creek Burn.  This is a wildfire from about 15 years ago.  All the interpretive signs say that it was a prescribed burn.  I believe it was actually a prescribed burn that got away, and became a much larger wild fire.  It was eventually brought under control before it burnt into the Kootenay Plains area, and almost to the David Thompson Resort.

I drove into the trailhead to Landslide Lake.  There were only two other vehicles here, and no one else around.  The area has recovered from the devastating fire and the young aspens have sprouted up to to a height of around ten feet.  

Although I have been on other trails in the area, I don't recall ever being at this particular one before.  There was an area near the highway where the natives, presumably from the Bighorn Reserve, have tied prayer ribbons to many of the aspen trees.  The interpretive signs speak of this being a sacred site.  I photographed here for a while, and then walked further up the slope into the burned area.  It was a beautiful day, with the temperature approaching 30C.  It was a little breezy and the sky was a mix of blue and clouds.  I shot with both my 4x5 and 8x10 view cameras.  By the time I finished up, it was getting to be late afternoon.  When I got packed up and got back onto the highway, headed east towards my cottage, it was a lot quieter, and obviously many of the weekend visitors had begun to make their way home.