27 July: Kootenay is in B.C., on the western side of the continental divide. We did one day hike there while still camped in Banff. On a number of previous days in B.C., Montana, and Alberta we had traveled through thick haze due to distant wildfires. The morning of our hike in to Stanley Glacier was the worst we had yet seen. Not only were the views very limited, but the smell of smoke was constant. We hiked up the Stanley Creek valley between two tall, steep-sided mountains into a glacial cirque. This valley is known for its Burgess Shale formations, which contain fossils about 500 million years old, and also for the Stanley Glacier, perched high above the creek on a north-facing slope. The smoke haze began to clear in the afternoon and we hiked further up the valley beyond the official end of the trail on well-worn paths up to a wooded shelf with a good view of Stanley Glacier above it.
On our way to the hike and back to our campsite, we saw a few of the state-of-the-art wildlife overpasses that have been constructed in the Bow River valley across the Trans Canada Highway. These structures are being constructed to provide continuous corridors between prime wildlife habitat areas in the Canadian Rockies for such species as grizzly bears, elk, deer, wolves, moose, and mountain lions, as well as smaller mammals. Monitoring day and night by remote cameras has shown that they are being used extensively, thus preventing numerous collisions that would have inevitably resulted from the high volume of car and truck traffic.
