Canada and Elk in the Campground

Elk in the Campground

August 9, 1998

A herd of about 25 elk grazed on the clover and grasses in Whistlers campground here at Jasper National Park in Alberta.  Composed mostly of females and their young, there were only a couple of young bucks with antlers in velvet.  Thought we had heard children at play  -- you know how little girls sort of screech like when little boys cause them some minor injury.  We looked out the window and there was a cow in the process of calling her twin calves.  As she inhaled, this screechy sound caused the calves to come running to her from out of the black spruce trees.  She allowed one to suckle momentarily before she moved on.  Then more elk moved into view.  Signs in the campground warn about approaching or feeding the elk – females are dangerous during calving season and males are dangerous during rutting season.  Their sharp front hooves can cause serious injury to human skulls and other parts of their anatomy.  But kids on bikes and folks with cameras come up close to them and they mostly just ignore these human trespassers into their domain.  The injury that can be inflicted by the rack of a large, rutting male to a fragile human body is too gruesome to imagine.  

Later, at the Yellowhead Highway park entrance on the west side of Jasper, the girls in the entrance booth waved to us enthusiastically.  Their message became clear when we saw four very large male elk with huge racks grazing along the highway.  Their antlers were still in full velvet, but showed some evidence of preliminary rubbing – hope the close-up photos taken from the window of the car turn out OK.  Since then we have seen bull elk along the highways in several other locations.  Because most of the park is covered with forest (Smokey Bear has been effective in preventing forest fires), there are not enough open grassy areas.  Along highways, the grass grows just fine, so elk tend to congregate on roadsides.  The park managers are experimenting with controlled burns to remedy this situation.  These burns will also help the bears.  Less forest means more berry bushes.  Bears need lots of berries to produce the fat needed for winter hibernation.  Bears prefer sweet berries like huckleberries or thimble berries, but because of Smokey Bear’s prevention of forest fires, there are not many of these berries.  Consequently, bears are forced to eat soap berries.  Sure enough, I tasted one and it tasted like soap.  Yuk!  Poor bears!

Signs posted at Moraine Lake Lodge in the Valley of Ten Peaks warn about one five-year-old bear that has been following hikers.  He becomes especially irritated when bikers sneak up on him.  There have been several “confrontations” with this bear, but his attacks always stop short of human injury.  Food quality in the high mountain valley is especially poor, so the bear only weighs about 200 pounds – not even big enough to play guard for the Texas A&M University football team.  Seems only a matter of time till he becomes sufficiently irritated with the human interlopers to whack one.  To keep him away from humans, wardens have closed the upper valley to humans when the bear emerges from hibernation in the spring – a time when the bear is very hungry and in no mood to tolerate the irritating humans.

At Medicine Lake, we stopped to observe Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.  Several rams were begging for food from the tourists.  When I opened the car door to get a close-up photo of one, a  ram with large curled horns trotted over, stuck his head in the open door and nudged my knee with his nose.  

It is unlawful to feed wildlife in Canadian National Parks, so – being a good, law-abiding citizen – I chose not to allow the ram to eat our lunch.  Obviously angered, the ram butted the door of my car before leaving to try to intimidate some Japanese tourists in a neighboring car.  Usually, when bighorn sheep are seen on the highway, they are licking the pavement or eating soil on the roadside.  They seem oblivious to the 18-wheel trucks whizzing by or the tourists all stopping for a photo – causing sheep jams.  These groups of sheep are composed mostly of ewes and kids; the rams enjoy all-male company except during mating season.  We watched two small kids climb, with great agility, down a near-vertical rocky cliff to their mom who was eating dirt on the roadside.  When the sheep shed their winter coats of hair they lose many minerals that must be replaced so they can grow a new coat for the next winter.  Failure to grow a luxuriant coat of hair means almost certain death when they try to survive the wickedly cold winters in the Canadian Rockies.

Medicine Lake was named by the local Indians who could find no cause, other than some magical “big medicine,” to explain why the lake empties every winter.  Melted snow-water flows through the Upper Maligne River to fill the lake in spring.  In the fall, when temperatures begin to stay below freezing most of the day, the water becomes tied up in ice and water flow into Medicine Lake stops.  The lake drains rapidly.  There is no surface, outflow river from the lake.  The water flows out through holes in the bottom of the lake, into underground rivers, and resurfaces into the Maligne River Canyon several miles downhill.  Early residents in the area tried to plug the holes in the lake bottom but to no avail.  The lake always found a way to continue the drain.  Good thing too, cause it is a heck of a tourist attraction.

Pat and Win at Maligne River Canyon

 

Table of Contents:  https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6813612681836200616/4404749581224177008?hl=en