Road Trip - Burgess Shale

We got up early, packed up the car, and got on the road towards Field. Today we are going on the Burgess Shale trilobite bed hike up Mt Stephen, and we needed to be at the meeting point in Field before 8:15am. We were both quite nervous, as we weren't sure if we were prepared (physically or equipment-wise) for the hike. It's advertised as "Hard, due to elevation gain", and they warn "you will not enjoy the trip unless you are fit and acclimatised to the altitude". The instructions say to pack for all weather occurrences, from searing sun to rain and snow, which can all happen within the same day.

We arrived at the meeting point half an hour early and set up on the tailgate to eat breakfast. A few other groups formed while we were eating, but it turned out they were going on hikes up other nearby mountains. We bought some coffee from the Field Trading Post just as it opened, and got to know Wayne and Michelle, another couple who were going on our hike. They were seasoned hikers and were quite surprised that we'd chosen this trail as our first. Uh-oh...

We made some sandwiches for lunch and packed them with our scroggin, Clif bars, water, and wet weather gear into our backpacks. Just after we were introduced to our guide David, the clouds came in, and it started pouring down. We all put on our jackets and waterproof pants (actually just our ski pants), and after picking up some walking poles (mainly old, bent ski poles) from the Burgess Shale Foundation hut, we set off toward the trailhead. By the time we reached the beginning of the track, we were already starting to feel out of breath, not a good sign.

At the trailhead, David explained that we were going into a restricted area, which was a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. A permit is required to enter the area, and the trail is monitored by remote cameras to ensure any unauthorised access is detected, and enforcement teams can be helicoptered in (apparently). Even though it was about 8°C, David took off his sweatshirt and commented that when your guide takes his warm clothes off you know things are about to get serious. He described the slope of the trail like a limit curve, where the track starts out gentle but gets continuously steeper and steeper the closer you get to the end.

The rain stopped after walking for half an hour or so, and I started to get way too hot in my wet weather gear. After cutting the layers back to shorts and thermals, the hike got a lot easier. We slogged on through the forest, the track climbing relentlessly upwards. David stopped the group reasonably regularly to bring us all back together, give us some info on the area we were passing through, and answer any questions. There were two teenage boys and their mother on the hike with us, from Boston. The mum was a biologist and school teacher, and both she and her kids asked some really interesting questions about trilobites and the ecology of their time period. David mentioned at the end (Spoiler: we made it) that he was really impressed at how switched on the boys were.

At one of these stops, David mentioned that we had walked about half the distance. Unfortunately, we'd only climbed one-fifth of the elevation, so if we thought it had been steep so far we were in for an unhappy surprise. Further along, David compounded this by telling us that the average grade was about 20° and that we were now two thirds through the total distance and hadn't encountered anything close to 20° yet. "That should scare you," he said.

We stopped for lunch at an incredible lookout point, 87 steps past the Emma tree. This was a tree that a hiker had once carved her name into, ensuring that she would be ridiculed forever more by the guides on the Burgess Shale climb. During lunch, we spotted a fearless mountain squirrel sniffing around our packs. We were told that they had grown accustomed to humans with food up the mountain, and even though they looked cute, they wouldn't hesitate to bite us and steal the food that we dropped. While we sat eating and enjoying the view, David told us about the current theories on why the trilobites are up a mountain, what they were doing before they were fossilised, and why there were so many of them. He also talked about how these beds were discovered, and the incredible amount of luck involved in coming across them when we did.

The fossils were discovered by a worker during the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which runs through Roger's Pass, the valley below the fossil beds. The beds had been unearthed by natural erosion, and because of the relatively fragile nature of the shale, the fossils probably would have been eroded away within a few hundred years.

We scrambled up the last section of track, some parts reaching 40°, and finally arrived at the fossil beds. We passed lots of signs warning we were in a restricted area, and that the fossil beds themselves were strictly off limits. However because we were with a fully permitted & licensed guide, we were allowed in! David explained to us the rules very clearly; we couldn't take our packs or poles into the fossil bed area, and although we could walk around and pick up anything we wanted, we weren't allowed to do anything to purposefully damage the fossils, or remove any of them from the site. There were several cameras around the outside monitoring our movements, just in case.

A trilobite can make three fossils; an impression of its shell, a relief of its shell, and the mineralised shell itself. This, along with the fact that trilobites seem to have moulted up to 20 times in their life, means that there are literally millions of fossilised remains in the Burgess Shale site. The particular style of preservation found here also enabled tough, soft tissue to be fossilised. This soft-part preservation is particularly significant, as it allows scientists to study parts of these organisms that have never been seen before.

One of the important soft-bodied fossils discovered here was Anomalocaris, initially thought to be a strange shrimp. Several different fossils had previously been identified as distinct creatures, but with the discovery of a complete Anomalocaris fossil here, it became apparent that all these fossils were just different parts of the same animal that had broken apart before being preserved. By studying the contents of the stomach of this complete fossil, scientists had hypothesised that Anomalocaris ate trilobites when they were shedding their shells, in their most soft and vulnerable state.

We walked around, took photos, and just generally marvelled at the incredible history of the 500 million-year-old site for about an hour until David rounded us up to start heading back. As it had done at the beginning of the day, the rain started up as soon as we began our descent. The wet shale on the steepest parts of the track made for some treacherous conditions, and several members of our group slipped over a few times. Katie and I were pleased with our new hiking shoes, which we had purchased in Vancouver in anticipation of this particular mountain. The ones who fell over were just wearing Nike sneakers, and fluffy Columbia duck boots.

We climbed downwards for about three hours straight, punctuated only by very short stops. On the way up David had warned us that we shouldn't really stop on the way down. Climbing up was mainly cardiovascular exercise, just using large muscles, and our hearts and lungs. Going down, on the other hand, put a lot more stress on smaller muscles, and more importantly our joints. As soon you stop for any amount of time fluid starts building up in your joints, which makes them stiff and sore. Better to just keep going.

We finally reached the bottom, and the group quickly split up. We thanked David for his excellent tour and exchanged contact details with Wayne and Michelle. After sitting in the car for a while contemplating what we'd just achieved, we drove onwards towards our next last-minute lodging: The Crossing Resort on the Icefields Parkway.

On the way, we stopped at Lake Louise for a celebratory pizza. We figured that, as we were stopped there already, we should probably go and see the lake as well. After battling through the crowds of smartphone photographers, we were presented with the stunning views of Lake Louise and the Victoria glacier. I'd been here in the winter several years before and found the summer scenery equally as spectacular.

We carried on along the Icefields Parkway, which is probably the most awe-inspiring road we've ever been on. Massive mountains and giant glaciers border the road, jagged rock and ice climbing up into the clouds on both sides. It was hard to concentrate on driving, as I didn't want to miss any of the view.

Our stop for the night was The Crossing Resort, in Saskatchewan River Crossing, Alberta. It's the only place to stop on the 4-hour drive between Jasper and Banff, so is comprised of a truck stop, petrol station, general store, restaurant, pub, and motel. As we were so far from anywhere and deep in the mountains, there was no cell phone reception (in fact there's no reception for most of the drive along the Icefields Parkway), and the internet connection at the motel is provided by glacially slow satellite uplink. The accommodation was pretty ordinary, but the scenery more than made up for it.