The Big Five

Our trip to South Africa in late October and early November of this year was our fourth African big game safari experience. We visited the Victoria Falls area in 2015; followed that up with two weeks in Kenya and Tanzania in 2018; and then spent a week plus in Uganda a couple of years ago. On each of our African safari trips, we have always endeavored to see Africa's Big Five wholly within each vacation. I don't think that is unusual, necessarily. It's pretty much a rite of passage at one time or another for all safari-goers to find the Big Five.

Not familiar with the Big Five? Well perhaps a little explanation is in order. 

Big Five. Mammals. Elephant, hippo, rhinoceros, giraffe and some other large animal, maybe? They seem like they might be the largest four plus one creatures out there in the African bush, right? But that's not the Big Five. It's not the largest five animals on the continent. And if it were, the African buffalo would probably round out that group, assuming you were not inclined to add two separate species of rhinoceros in white and black varieties. 

The Big Five is not a size thing. It's a nomenclature that stems from colonial times to identify the five toughest creatures to kill on foot. And the elephant, the rhinoceros and, yes, the African buffalo are on the list along with the lion and the leopard. We were not in Africa to kill anything, on foot or in any sort of vehicle. We never would or will be. The only shooting of animals we'd be doing would be with a camera. 

Lions (top) and African buffalo (bottom).

We have already seen the Big Five on a single trip before. Not near Vic Falls or in Uganda. But between Kenya and Tanzania five years or so ago, we managed to get good sightings of all animals that make out this sought-after group. On that trip, we were told that the true Big Five includes only the black rhinoceros so it took us all the way to our last stop at Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania to declare our quest fully complete. But in preparing to write this post, I found no such specificity in the rhino's inclusion on this list. So on this trip, we'd be good with either white or black. 

Despite having already seen the Big Five on a single trip, we still wanted it again. We probably always will.

We could hardly have picked a better country than South Africa to do it. That country is so committed to the Big Five that they have a picture of one of each of the Five on their five banknotes. They also have the largest population of rhinos by far in the world and also boast robust populations of lions, leopards and elephants. Take that "robust" statement with a huge grain of salt. All of these animals are endangered. Nonetheless, we liked our chances, particularly considering Kruger National Park, where we would be spending four full days, is well stocked (again, relatively) with these creatures. 

And sure, South Africa also has plentiful African buffalo, but then again, we are pretty much talking about cattle here.

It took us about an hour in Kruger before we came across the first of the Big Five. And sure, it was of course a buffalo. Probably or pretty much definitely the least exciting of the Five. Good sighting? Sure. We'll take any wildlife sighting that soon after entering any Park. But it's a buffalo.

It got better. Quickly. Less than 15 minutes later, we'd seen some elephants and what we thought were two lions off to the right of our vehicle. This Kruger thing was shaping up to be a great experience in the first 75 minutes. We couldn't have hoped for any better start. It looked like we were well on our way to a complete Big Five experience like in a couple of hours maybe. All we needed was a leopard and maybe one or two (although really just one) rhinoceros and we'd be done before lunch on the first day.

And those two lions off to the right? Well, there were two lions, a male and female possibly mated or about to be mated. We watched them walk off into the distance and into hiding for a few minutes before realizing there was a second male mere feet from our vehicle and completely camouflaged against the brush. We never even noticed a 400 pound or so cat about 12 feet from the left side of the car. Difficult to hunt on foot? Umm...yeah they would be when you can't even see them. Good thing we were in a car.

So what did the next hour hold for us? Well, let's just say we had to live with buffalo, elephants and lions for days. Yes, days.

First elephant in Kruger (top) and those first two lions (bottom).

But the first couple of hours in a Park coming across elephants, lions and buffalo is not nothing.

On the watchability scale of African animals, for me nothing comes close to the fascination I have with elephants. It's the intelligence and social structure that keeps my attention. When you come across a herd of elephants, you are acknowledged and sometimes put on notice either visually with a hard stare or audibly with a "keep away" noise. There is no other animal out there that looks through the open sides of the safari vehicle and into your eyes and your soul the way an adult elephant does. We are not important to any other species. Elephants know the danger and why we are dangerous. Not lions. Not leopards. Not anything else. Just the elephants.

Sometimes our watching and appreciating takes a long time and I will say we got precious few moments of insight into elephant interpersonal relationships on our four days in Kruger. But we did get a look at the unbridled joy that is a herd of elephants heading out of the bush and sprinting for a lake representing both a long cool drink and a shower at the same time. We also got a look at two younger elephants play-fighting which looked like it was going to end in the larger of the two sitting on the smaller. That would not be a good situation. Elephants weigh a lot.

But just like elephants do, mom (or one of the moms) was watching intently and that act of sitting was interrupted and very effectively stopped by a loud and brusque trumpet from a nearby adult. No sitting on each other. Don't you know that you are endangered as a species? 

There are a lot of elephants in Kruger. Too many, in fact to preserve the land. The South Africans have tried sending some of them to neighboring Mozambique but they keep coming back to Kruger. Too many elephants in this day and age in a particular spot isn't good. It will mean trouble with humans or trouble with the environment and the only real way to solve that is to start killing elephants. Not a comforting thought. 

The middle photo of this sequence is my favorite elephant picture of this trip. I think it's the sky and the elephant on the left.

If it seems like Kruger delivered on the elephants (and it did; it really did!), the lion sightings were even better. While we missed lions entirely on day four, we got at least one on all the other three days. Day two was the best, with four separate lion sightings, including the end of a kill scene and two separate sightings of different white (albino) lions. And two of the sightings were extended. Like at least 20-30 minutes each. And they were only that short because we decided to leave.

I cannot understate the value of these sighting. We have never had a lion day like day two in Kruger and we'd never seen white lions in the wild before anywhere. One of the two white lions was a full grown male named Casper (like the ghost...) who was in pursuit of a mate at about the pace that I would expect a full grown male lion to act. Meaning slowly. Super slowly. A lion's life is a lazy one most of the time. And that is particularly true of male lions. They only really exert themselves when they are hunting and the males usually leave that to the lionesses anyway. The reason why we left the presumed and future mating scene is because we weren't convinced anything was going to happen. It looked promising for a while before both lions just laid down and looked at each other for a while.

Casper (the friendly lion?) on the move and with presumed love interest.

And the kill scene? 

We have never seen the end of a hunt by a pack of lions. It's still on our list, despite all reports that we've had that the actual witnessing (including hearing) a kill can be super upsetting. For 2025, we'd have to be satisfied with the end of the feast on a hunted male kudu. We got to the kill site about as late as we could have, with a group of lions lolling around fat and happy after eating their fill and watching a (second) albino lion still working on the remains of the kudu. 

I cannot imagine how brutal a pack of lions taking down an animal can be live. At least the cats kill their prey once they have a hold of it unlike painted dogs and hyenas which will start eating their kill before it's even killed. Maybe one day. 

So of the first-hour-in-Kruger-Big-Five list, that leaves the African buffalo. Definitely not as sexy or exciting as either elephants or lions. They are literally like large cows moving in herd from one place to another to graze. 

That is, unless they get a little testy. African buffalo are killers. No, I don't mean they hunt things down and eat them. I just mean that they are unpredictable and protective of their young (and adults) and can get mean. And when they do that, they start swinging their heads at whatever they want to drive away with the sinister intent of getting those lethal and sharp curved horns into whatever is opposing them. I would not want to be on foot near these creatures when that sort of action starts happening.

The thrill I got out of African buffalo on this trip was witnessing some play fighting between some young bulls. We watched two or three males get their heads and shoulders low to the ground and start engaging another male in the start of a struggle. Their horns start in these thick caps on top of their heads which they use to start to tussle with their rivals. They then hook their horns with their opponent and push and twist. You can see the immense strength in these creatures in their thick neck muscles while they are locked into another bull's headgear.

Mating season for African buffalo occurs in March or April to allow the birth of calves to coincide with the rainy season in sub-Saharan Africa. I'm assuming what we watched in Kruger would be a lot more sustained and violent closer to mating time. This late October sparring was just that...practice. There's no sense really getting into it until there is a reward to be had. 

The windows we have into the lives of these species as trans-Atlantic tourists are so limited. The first time we safari-ed in 2015 we didn't get any lions feasting or any buffaloes struggling. In fact, we didn't see anything really super-compelling about buffalo other than a lot of mean-mugging until this fourth safari trip. It would make way more sense to just head over to Africa for a month or so, go out every day privately with a guide / driver and really focus on behaviors of each animal with extended personal viewings from close up. Of course, we all have that sort of money and time, right? 

But this is a post about the Big Five, not the Big Three, right? Where are the rhinos and leopards? 

Let's rip the Band-Aid off about the rhinos, shall we? No rhinos seen by us in Kruger. We got a story about mating habits of rhinos which apparently involves pooping (on the ground for white rhinos and on the tree trunks for black rhinos) complete with a pile of poop that we found by the side of the road. We also saw some captive rhinos in a game reserve next to a gas station on the return trip from Kruger to Johannesburg (or Joburg / Jozy if you are a little more with it). But rhinos in Kruger? Nope. We looked. We saw poop. We didn't see rhinos.

You can't always get what you want.

The closest we got to a rhinoceros in Kruger. White rhino, apparently. Poop's on the ground.

But we did get a Big Four out of Five.

I would estimate the total amount of leopard-viewing time for us in Kruger National Park in 2025 at about five minutes. No exaggeration. No low-balling. Five minutes total. And that was with two leopards in two separate locations. Both in trees. And both did the same thing as soon as we showed up. They both (one female and one male) looked around, climbed out of their respective tree very quickly and walked away. The female walked directly away from us and was instantly lost in the brush. The male walked to the right and was in sight for maybe a minute after descending. If he had walked away from us, our five minutes might have been four minutes.

There is something indescribably gorgeous about a leopard that is different from any other animal we have ever seen in Africa. Elephants are dusty and have wiry hairs all over their body which are a bit off-putting. Rhinos are dusty and usually have red-billed oxpeckers feeding on an open wound or two. African buffalo are dusty and with wet noses and just look irritable all the time. Lions are dusty and shaggy and unkempt and when feeding, generally covered with a little bit of blood.

Leopards are none of that. Not even dusty. They are gorgeously colored, super-well groomed and the most well-put together animal that you can find in the bush. They are sleek and powerful and just spectacularly perfect every time you see them. Pick any animal you can find in Africa. There's no comparison to the leopard from an appearance standpoint.

Was five minutes enough? Absolutely not. But it got me the picture below. I took a few more of the two leopards that we saw but none of the others are as incredible as the one below. And because we got such an emphemeral look, it's the only one I'm posting. This is my picture of the trip. It's not perfect. There is way too much light in the background. But it's the picture of the trip for me.

Big Five? Not this year. I'm not heartbroken. Kruger was an amazing Park and it made our time in South Africa an incredible safari experience. Wildlife trips are unpredictable. The animals rarely cooperate. You just have to go out every day or as many days as possible and look and hope. No rhinos and no regrets here. 

We got an incredible collection of photographs from Kruger. When I started this post I was working off a series of 79 "best" photos of our Big Five (the poop counts!) from this trip. I managed to whittle that group down to 25. There have been 19 to this point in this post. The other six (all of lions and elephants) are below. 

We didn't see the Big Five this year. Oh well. Who cares? We may never see them all in one trip again. Nature is like that. We'll take what we can and keep going back until we can't for whatever reason again. We've pretty religiously been to Africa on safari every 2-1/2 years. We skipped 2020 and got a five year gap between Kenya / Tanzania and Uganda. I can't imagine we won't be back on the Dark Continent in the winter or spring of 2028. 

Painted Dogs

In August of 2015, we visited sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. We flew through New York and Johannesburg and landed in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe where we were whisked into some sort of van and transferred to our hotel to start one of the most adventurous vacations we had taken to that point.

Along the way to the hotel, we saw a sign by the side of the road. You know...one of those "Deer Crossing" signs or whatever they have in the United States to alert drivers to the presence of wildlife. Only this one was bound to be some sort of "Elephant Crossing" or "Lion Crossing" sign since we were in safari country south of the equator on the Dark Continent, right? And sure enough, it was a uniquely African wildlife alert sign. But it wasn't warning motorists of elephants or lions or hippos or even impala on the highway. It was warning travelers about painted dogs on the road.

Painted dogs? What the heck is a painted dog? I believe our exact reaction was something to the effect of "we don't want to see painted dogs". Our guide who was riding along with us on the shuttle van tried to sway our opinion on this one but we were having none of it. Our safari guide a couple of days later seemed to go to extraordinary lengths to try to find these dogs and we still didn't get the appeal. 

When we got home, we looked up these painted dog things. Oh. My. God. We missed something special by not looking.

So at the beginning of our second African safari in 2018 when we were asked by our tour leaders what we wanted to see on safari, we of course answered "painted dogs". Not an option. Not going to happen. Not in Kenya and Tanzania. No dice. 

Then we went back to African again in 2023. Uganda and Rwanda. Now admittedly this trip was to take a primate-focused safari which featured visits on foot with habituated chimpanzees and gorillas and didn't priortize traditional safari experiences in the bush. But there was one day or so in a Park. How about painted dogs in 2023? Nope. Also a no go. No painted dogs in Uganda. Uh huh.

So now it's 2025 and we headed back to Africa. South Africa. Kruger National Park. And I know well and good that there are painted dogs in Kruger. And of course, the fourth time was the charm. Perhaps that was obvious from the pictures to this point on this post. And yes, indeed, those are painted dogs. But it still wasn't that easy.

Check out the coloration on the lead dog in the top photo above. 

I'm going to wager that most people (just like us in 2015) and in particular in America have never heard to these animals. Why would they? Nature shows that we watch usually focus on cats or elephants or mega-fauna like hippos, giraffes and rhinos. And no judgment there. The first safari trip we took in 2015 I had hippos at the top of my personal must-see list. 

So what's so special about these painted dogs (sometimes known as African wild dogs), you might ask? I know on some level they look like slightly mangy and skinny puppies with oversized ears, but if that's how you see these things, then you are vastly underrating and underestimating painted dogs. And you do not want to underestimate painted dogs. 

Of all the hunters in Africa, painted dogs are the most fearsome. Not because they are people killers either purposefully (because they aren't) or accidentally (because it doesn't happen with painted dogs like it happens with African buffalo or those beloved hippos of mine) but because when they decide to hunt something, they generally get it. While exact statistics about hunt success rates are anecdotal at best, our guide Gareth for our four days of safari put their success rate at 80 percent. This is backed up by a quick google search which reveals numbers between 60 and 90 percent. Going with the quoted 80 number, that means once painted dogs start a hunt, they get four out of every five targets.

Perhaps some perspective is in order because when I decide to hunt down some food, my success rate is pretty much 100%. It doesn't work that way in the animal kingdom. A similar google search for lions gets me a success rate of less than 20% for solo hunts and about 30% for group hunts. Leopard? Less than 40%. Cheetah? Maybe as high as 60% (speed kills, right?).  80 percent is insanely high.

So why does an animal that's nowhere near as fast as a cheetah and nowhere near as big or strong as a leopard (or certainly an adult male lion) hunt so well? Simple. They are coordinated social animals, they are persistent and they are distance runners in the most extreme sense. They generally won't tire before their prey. And they can run at about 40 kilometers per hour for five kilometers at a time.

Play fighting (top) and fighting over bones (bottom).

Of course, these animals are endangered. I mean eventually pretty much every creature in the world except man is going to be endangered because of man. But painted dogs are already there. What's the issue here? Diseases (read: man), habitat destruction (read: man) and killings (read: man) when the dogs encroach upon livestock adjacent to areas where they live. 

All told in Africa, maybe there are between 6,500 and 7,000 total out there in the wild. And since I gave perspective vs. other species on the hunting statistics, there are about 500,000 elephants and 35,000 or so lions on the continent. 6,500 to 7,000 is not a lot at all. Kruger National Park houses maybe 300 to 350 and it's about 20% larger than the state of Connecticut in size. Does finding one of 350 dogs in an area that size seem like a tall task? It certainly did to me. So while we pestered Gareth every day as to when we were going to get to see the painted dogs, our hopes were set suitably low.

And for three days, Kruger disappointed. Well, disappointed as far as painted dogs go. Kruger is amazing and I'm sure I'll make that abundantly clear in future posts. But days one through three...lots of looking and no painted dogs. Our tour group was divided into two carloads and the other car saw maybe a glimpse on day three. But us...nothing.

Day four was an optional, additional cost, safari. And we had to do it. This is why we came. We set off into the park just after 5:30 a.m. and at 6:30 a.m. we found some painted dogs. This couldn't have paid off any better.

The sighting we had was thrilling. Finally seeing these dogs after effectively 10 years of searching was just awesome. And there were a ton of other safari vehicles hanging around. So much so that with the pack of dogs stretched out so far, we left. 

I know, right? This was not solely our decision. In fact, it wasn't our decision at all. These things happen sometimes in a car full of people you don't know with a guide who presumably is making good decisions. It could have been disastrous. But that last part is critical to note. Because Gareth did, in fact, know what he was doing. Less than an hour later and another pack. This time finishing off the last of a kill. Young impala. Yummy!

Most of the videos I've watched online of painted dogs have been hunting videos. In fact, I think they all might have been hunting videos. They are exciting and thrilling and ultimately upsetting, particularly if you find one where the dogs start eating their prey before it's actually dead (because they do not really worry about the object of their hunt being dead before they start eating). 

The end of a feast after a kill was a different scene. And this is why going to see wildlife in the actual wild is so valuable. You don't always get what you think you will get and sometimes seeing a slice of life that is different than what you would select of an on-demand wildlife safari (if there were such a thing) is super valuable. 

While there were one or two dogs still crunching on (see the second picture above) or fighting over (picture a little further above) impala bones, most of the pack was chilled out interacting with each other. Maybe there's a tussle or two over the last couple of bones or some play fighting (sometime involving those very same bones) or just some chasing each other but it was pretty serene. While I am sure there are times that this sort of play is something other than play, the day we were there was very good natured. These dogs are a family and a hunting collective. It pays to work together rather than compete most days I guess.

Despite the lack of a hunt, we still got an amazing impression of what these dogs are made of. Their playing and running got us a great look at how light on their feet they are. This is one of the most impressive features of these dogs. They don't really stand and trot. They almost glide. They appear to be completely weightless. They are absolutely as lean as a hunter can possibly be. I can't imagine how scary a pack of these things is when chasing prey. The sense of the inevitable must be soul-crushing to whatever animal is being pursued.

But we also got to see the pack in action in a different way. One of the side-stories from our second pack viewing was that there were a couple of hyenas hanging around looking to steal the last of the impala skeleton from the dogs. The hyenas would advance and retreat, I guess testing the dogs attentiveness. One of the hyenas had blood all over its back leg, which I suppose could have been the result of a dog attack. 

At one time, there must have been a particularly realistic theft attempt or the dogs just got sick of the threat (we couldn't tell because the hyenas were behind our vehicle) because the pack mobilized. The alpha male and female both started running towards the hyenas and pretty much every adult dog followed. And quickly. No debate. No hesitation. Almost all of them left to fight together. 

Almost all. Because a couple stayed back to protect the pups. And more importantly, it appeared to our uneducated eyes that one of the dogs who was staying behind actually blocked one of the older pups who was trying to follow the alphas. He (I'm assuming it was a boy pup) kept trying to run to the location with the hyenas and she (again...assuming) kept cutting him off, driving him in the other direction or into the bush where it was less easy to run free. If we were reading the situation correctly, that is really pretty excellent and so cool. 

Then there were the sounds. It's not like the family dog. No growling or parking or yapping. The sounds were higher pitched than yaps. I'd say yips (debate me if you feel there's no distinction there) but someone in our group called them chirps, which is probably closer to the truth. These are astonishing sounds to be coming from canines. I'm assuming there was some form of communication and that the yips and chirps were relaying some message or dialog. I assume this is not meaningless barking and that the different vocalizations are, in fact, a form of communications which is pretty sophisticated. 

It is way more fun to watch animals who have complex social structures like elephants and lions and primates than some other species. We got over 30 minutes of this (plus sound) with painted dogs over two separate sessions in one single day of safari. That may not seem like a lot but a safari is not a continuous wildlife watching experience. When you are done with one species you don't just move to the next enclosure or cage and instantly see the next one like you do at a zoo. Moments like this are fleeting and pretty much completely uncontrollable. We got super lucky here. 

Ten years of looking (granted with large gaps of about 2-1/2 years between looks) and Kruger and Gareth solved it for us in four days. What now, Africa? Now that we have found your painted dogs. 

Train Kept A-Rollin

How great an idea are national parks? Whether it's in the United States or Canada or anywhere else around the world, what could be more inspiring than a country's government setting aside areas of absolutely outstanding natural beauty within its borders for the use of its population in perpetuity? No development. No farming. No settlement. Just open space preserved that way. Awesome, right?

I certainly think so. I love these places. 

But things don't always start out the way they seem today. 

So, sure, in 2025 it is amazing to be able to visit six Parks Canada National Parks just west of Calgary. I honestly loved every bit of the country and the scenery and the gorgeous natural wonders that we explored in late June and early July of this year. And full disclosure...I want to go back. Both to Banff and Jasper and Yoho and beyond. Way beyond. I'm all in on Canada's National Parks. How the heck have we never explored these places before this year? 

And yes, we already have our next Canada vacation booked. And there is at least one National Park on the itinerary. 

How could you not want to go back and see this sort of view? Glacier National Park.

There was a time not too long ago (let's say 150 years or so...) when it was pretty much about impossible for any sort of regular person on this planet to get to Banff and everywhere else we visited this summer. 

4-1/2 hour flight to Calgary? Forget about it. Calgary as a city? Not yet. Not then. In fact, no Calgary at all. Not then. No city. No town. No village. No hamlet. Nothing.

If you even had the time and money to travel (and let's face it, it hasn't been that long since a large portion of the population on Earth could really do much with their lives than struggle to stay alive), how would you get there? On foot? Are you crazy? In some kind of horse drawn wagon? Probably not. Not in that country. On horseback? I guess. If you can live off the land and manage maintain good relations with the people and wildlife already there. 

What about the railroad? Didn't that exist in the 1870s? The transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed in 1869. Couldn't you ride the rails out to what is now Banff? 

Nope. No you couldn't. No railroad in Canada back then.

But the idea was out there. When British Columbia agreed to join Canada (and not the United States) in 1871, they demanded a railroad. One that would connect Canada's newest residents to the rest of Canada on the eastern side of the continent. So Canada embarked on a national project to connect the two coasts of the country by train. 

It started out great, meaning with mass bribes to government decision makers; generous to insanely generous land grants to the awarded contractor; required approval of additional funds when the project was in a "we either pay what we shouldn't or let the whole thing just end up as nothing" status; and generally seemed like a huge gamble for everyone involved but of course really ended up being gigantically profitable (on like a generational wealth basis) for those same people. All of them. The people getting paid and the people authorizing the funds.

Oh...and it eventually it paved the way for Canadians to visit their nation's first National Parks, complete with luxury hotels at the stops along the line. And of course, those hotels were built and operated by the same folks who secured the insane but insanely rich contracts to build the railroad in the first place. Of course it did. 

Rogers Pass. Glacier National Park.

So putting aside all the grift and bribery and overcharging the Canadian government and corruption, building a railroad across Canada was a monumental achievement that is still evident today. And nowhere was that achievement tougher and more costly on a number of levels than the portion of track spanning the Canadian Rockies. But it happened. 

How tough was it to build through the Rockies? Well, maybe we should start with how easy it was building a railroad across the prairie. Easy if setting up a mobile camp that was supposed to be alcohol free but which rarely was in the middle of nowhere with potentially hostile people and wildlife staffed by lots of imported labor divided racially with plenty of white resentment towards the better organized and more effective but lower paid Chinese workers that is. 

The Canadian Pacific Railroad started their work on the prairie. They did that so that as much land and money could convey to them for making progress as quickly as possible. On a good day, over six miles of track could be laid on the flat open prairie. I know that might not seem like a ton of progress but in the mountains it was significantly more difficult. On some days, 2 meters of progress was made. And that was using heavy quantities of dynamite. 

And that progress in the Rockies could only be made after a path through was found. Today, it looks simple because the job is done. You just drive it. But back in the second half of the nineteenth century, finding the right pass through the mountains that could also work with the required maximum grade for locomotive travel was a giant endeavor. It was so complicated that the CPR had to pay someone to do it for them. That finders fee payment to one A.P. Rogers came with a contractual requirement to name the pass after him in perpetuity. 

This summer, the railroad was very visible to us as we drove through Banff, Yoho and Mount Revelstoke National Parks and in the town of Golden. Heck, we had to wait on more than one occasion for a very long train to pass in front of us in the way to or from dinner in Golden. It was not an unexpected sight to see trains rolling along the tracks as we drove through that gorgeous landscape west of Calgary. All of that track is on solid ground, on fill which I am sure is engineered and compacted to provide the most stable and safe ride.

It wasn't always that way. In the first draft of the railroad through this area of Canada, there were places where the ground was too steep for a train in the late 1800s to climb. So the engineers that built the original railroad used elevated sections of track on wooden trestles (in the 1880s) that were eventually replaced with stone masonry piers (in the early 1900s). Some of these tracks on trestles are piers were really steeper than the rules would allow and so because of the importance attached to an operable coast-to-coast railroad, some corners were allowed to be cut. They could fix it later, right? And what were the odds things would go wrong in these steep sections? Oh...that also happened to be banked so the train could go up them fast to make the grade and not fall off the track. That's all OK, right? 

I'm sure someone felt it was safe enough. The odds of someone dying in a train falling off an elevated track were certainly lower than the risk of death to someone placing dynamite into a drilled hole in rock and then swinging away in a chair on a rope before the dynamite exploded, right? Of course that person was getting paid, not paying. 

Eventually, the elevated tracks got replaced. The deteriorating condition of the original wooden trestles sort of forced the railroad to move to masonry piers. The move away from those piers was likely driven by fears of trains flying off tracks than by the stone piers collapsing but eventually it got done. 

But there is still one place where you can see evidence of how it used to be. It's a trail called Loop Brook Trail in Glacier National Park. And it's super simple and amazing at the same time. 

But first, let me say how incredibly gorgeous this Rogers Pass in Glacier National Park is. I know the Pass was selected for its relative (I guess) ease of passage through the Rockies but it also is just spectacular. There's a picture above. Since we got back from Canada, I've looked through photos again and again that we took in and of those mountains and I'm not sure there's a place of more supreme beauty than Rogers Pass. Yes, there's a road going right through it but I don't even care. We actually stopped on the way back to Golden on the side of the road and took more pictures of this area even though we already had the exact same pics looking the opposite way in the morning. Just stunning.

And after our second pass through Rogers Pass, we got to Loop Brook.

Loop Brook Trail starts maybe 100 feet or so from the parking lot. Want a trail with very little hiking to get there? Loop Brook may be the trail for you. And right at the beginning of the trail are five of the original 1906 stone piers that used to hold the railroad tracks aloft. They are just standing there in the forest next to a furiously bubbling stream, relics of some past age when people did things differently and traveled differently. After more than 100 years, they are standing solidly still tracing the curve of the original railroad route. They are just incredible to see, still there after all this time. 

We have spent time over the past 12 years hiking all over some places we have been to discover ruins hidden in the middle of nowhere. Mayan ruins in Guatemala. Incan cities in Peru. Ancient stone circles in England and tombs in Ireland. The list goes on. And here in Canada in the Rocky Mountains is the same sort of stuff. Only a lot more recent. It reminds me of Frodo and Sam and the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring passing giant statues of bygone kings in the woods on their way to Mordor. That's what this felt like to me. These are modern day remnants engineered to hold train tracks and they are just incredible.

The trail helps you appreciate these relics. It loops around to the top of the western-most pier so you can see them from above. And it does the same on the other end, admittedly after you pass the one pier that has collapsed in the 120 or so years since it was put in place by men whose names are probably not even known to this day.

The collapse, by the way...a combination of erosion from the stream undermining the foundation followed by an avalanche to really knock the thing over. Impressive that four of the five are still standing up as they were intended given those kind of threats. 

Those five stone towers along Loop Brook Trail are not the only masonry railroad piers still standing. As you drive into the parking lot for the Trail, you pass eight others, all proudly present as you drive the road to the trailhead past and between these mighty stone structures. We stopped on the way out to admire, to look at them from every angle we could and to touch them and feel the solidity that is still there. 

This whole experience took less than a half an hour. But the symbolism associated with this stop was immense for me. I know these kinds of things mean more to me than they do to some others because I'm an architect and have actively been engaged for over 30 years in designing and seeing things built that are supposed to last. Seeing stone structures that were built effectively in the middle of nowhere more than a century ago that still feel enormously there to the touch is just fantastic. 

This was also our last real stop in the western Rockies. We visited Takakkaw Falls in Yoho the morning after and did a little impromptu birding at Vermilion Lakes and at a bathroom stop in Banff later in our drive to Calgary, but in our real exploration of Parks Canada's National Parks, this half an hour with these stone giants sticks out as the culmination of our 2025 time in the mountains. I think it's fitting that we stopped and admired part of the railroad from the 1880s that brought so many people to this area for the first time all those decades ago. I couldn't have thought of a better ending. 

For now. If I have my way, we'll be back some day.

The first cross-country journey on the Canadian Pacific Railroad departed Montreal on June 28, 1886 and arrived in Vancouver on July 4 that same year. We arrived in the Canadian Rockies on June 27 of this year (149 years later) and departed on June 3. If we'd only done this trip a year and a day later...

No regrets on the schedule. I loved this trip. Like really loved it. What's up next? I'm thinking South Africa is nice this time of year.

Top Of The World

Through our first four full days in the Canadian Rockies in late June and early July we had visited or traveled through four Parks Canada National Parks. But it wasn't really that straightforward. We'd started out driving in Banff National Park and Yoho National Park but didn't stop in either. When we started our visits for real we visited Yoho first; then Banff; then Kootenay National Park (twice); then Yoho again; then Banff again; then Jasper National Park; and finally Banff a third time. 

Our goal was six Parks in five full days. So after all of that back and forth laid out above, we were down to a single full day remaining and two parks un-visited. Time to double up on Glacier National Park and Mount Revelstoke National Park. Last day, here we go!

So it's not like having two Parks to visit in the last day was an accident or anything. We planned it this way. Indeed, the very reason why we picked Golden, British Columbia as our home in the Rockies this year was so we could spend time in six Parks. And we planned all along to do Glacier and Mount Revelstoke in one single day. To visit the first four Parks, we headed east. To hit the last two, we'd head west.

So far, I've written and published these blog posts in the order we visited the Parks. If I did that with the last two Glacier would be first because we had to drive through that Park to get to Mount Revelstoke. But because we didn't actually do any park stuff in Glacier until the return trip, Revelstoke gets the five spot and Glacier gets saved for last. 

There's another reason Glacier is last but that's for another post.

I have to tell you Revelstoke didn't start out looking so promising. 

Our major planned stop in that Park was a drive to the top of its namesake mountain and the quick walk from the parking lot to the actual top of the mountain so we could see multiple peaks of the Canadian Rockies in all their glory all around us. Revelstoke appeared to us to be one of the only places where summiting the top of a mountain involved very little walking up. And being no mountaineers but finding a view like that too hard to pass on with little effort, we were all in.

The night before we were due to visit Revelstoke we checked the navapp to confirm the driving time and discovered bad news: the road to the summit wasn't open all the way to the top. We knew there would be the risk of snow still affecting access to the mountain top in early July which is why we pushed this park as late in our trip as possible. Finding out it was closed was a bit of a gut punch. But having no other plan, we figured we'd go anyway, make all the other stops we planned and see how far up the mountain we could get.

The view from halfway up Mount Revelstoke.

Our first stop in Mount Revelstoke National Park was at a place called Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk. We needed a stop along the way and I'd never seen a skunk cabbage. That and a reasonable length on the walk at that point seemed like a good break in the drive. 

It didn't work. We saw no skunk cabbages. We saw no boardwalk. We walked in the woods until we got to a sign telling us we could proceed no further. "End of Trail" was the actual message. No explanation other than that. But no cabbages. And no walk. Stop number one closed down  and our directions to the summit of Mount Revelstoke still having us stopping short. Not looking good!

And while we didn't know it at the time we stopped at Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk, our planned stop at Giant Cedars Boardwalk on the way back was also closed. Three planned stops. Three closed stops. I'm telling you...Mount Revelstoke didn't start out looking so promising.

The path to Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk. Only...no skunk cabbages and no boardwalk.

Then we got a break. That information that the road to the summit of Mount Revelstoke was closed? Turned out it was false. The internet is not always right. Shocker, I know. We rolled right through the Park gate and started the long, slow climb up that zig zag road to the top-most parking lot but we were on our way. 

And to be perfectly clear, the top-most parking lot was closed, so we really went to the next top-most parking lot. That meant a little more walking than we planned on this one. And of course, there were multiple, multiple signs about bears. Ugh! Are you kidding me? Why is the summit parking lot not open?

There were no bears. Who are we kidding?

Wildflowers? Is this it?

The signature attraction at the summit of Mount Revelstoke is apparently meadows and meadows of wildflowers. And of course, because I used the word "apparently" in the prior sentence, we did NOT see meadows and meadows of wildflowers. But that does not mean Mount Revelstoke was a disappointment. 

First, while we didn't see really very many wildflowers at all, you could tell they were coming. There were little orange and yellow flowers dotting the sides of the road to the summit. If these are the first ones to emerge and they are going to be followed by many, many more of the same sorts of things, I bet they are spectacular. And yes, I know I'm projecting the whole thing here and there might never be more than we found by the side of the road. 

We have a whole list of "next time" things to see in the Canadian Rockies. The wildflowers on Mount Revelstoke might have to be added to that list. Although if we are staying in Jasper "next time", it's going to be tough to get all the way to Mount Revelstoke. 

Second, the summit was incredible. Yes, it took more walking than we planned and I'm convinced we took about the most indirect route we could take that took us through what looked like remote back country (and therefore possibly filled with bears...I know, I'm fixated a bit here) but was really a stone's throw from the nearest paved road. At the very top of the mountain, there's an old historic fire lookout and it really is worth the very non-stressful (totally serious) final climb. You may have to scramble over some snow to get there but it really is an awesome view. There are mountains in that Rocky Mountain range all around you and it is a super clear 360 degree view. There is nothing else in the way of that view on the top of the mountain.

Third, there's a Native American art trail near the top of the mountain called First Footsteps. Any time we get to explore art created by the descendants of the original inhabitants of this continent of ours we feel privileged. And seeing sculpture and other works of art against the natural background of the Canadian Rockies is just an amazing setting. I mean we are on top of a mountain for crying out loud.

The real joy here was the summit. Of all the mountain views we'd been gazing and gawking at all week, the ones we got from the top of Mount Revelstoke were by far the most expansive and distant. We really got a sense of how far this range that we'd been exploring for the better part of a week covered. And we knew we couldn't see far enough to see all of what we'd driven through and past and in for the four days prior to our mountain topping. 

But ain't it always the small things that put experiences over the top just a little bit.

In 2011, some Parks Canada employees at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland decided to drop 18 pairs of red Adirondack chairs somewhere in the Park for people to discover. They picked some iconic, but also some obscure, places to locate these seats. Some could be stumbled upon easily; others would take a little more work or would be more out of the way.

It became sort of a thing. Today, there are more than 400 red Adirondack chairs scattered about all over the wilds of Canada. We had maybe 10 or 12 approximate locations on our itinerary where we could find a pair or two (or 10 or 12, I guess). Yet after four plus days spending at least 60% of our waking hours in Parks Canada National Parks, not a single red chair was discovered. Until Mount Revelstoke.

Yep, on our walk to the summit, just as we reached the upper (closed) parking area, we looked to our right and there was our first pair of red chairs. Pointed towards one of those gorgeous views at the top of the mountain. We climbed up to the old fire watch and then on the way back down the mountain, spent five minutes or so looking out over the Rockies from a red chair each.

And after we drove, struck out at Cabbage Skunk Boardwalk, summited and sat, we had some lunch. Packed lunch, of course!

We first started packing lunch on National Park trips in 2020 during COVID. We sort of had to. Between closed restaurants and not wanting to get sick, we started hitting the grocery store in whatever town we were staying at, got up 15 or so minutes earlier than usual every day and made a sandwich and threw some chips and maybe a couple of other things in a lunch bag. We love it. It allows us to stop wherever we want when we are hungry and pick somewhere gorgeous to just sit and recharge with some food. 

Our choice at Mount Revelstoke was the spot below, right next to a clear mountain lake that I feel pretty confident in saying is all snow melt run off. It was peaceful and calm and sunny and the Parks Canada folks had managed to place a picnic table right next to it so we could sit and eat. We packed lunch on fours days on this vacation. This spot was my favorite. And that along with four of five other things made Revelstoke memorable.

Mount Revelstoke didn't go exactly to plan. I still wonder about those wildflowers. But it was pretty amazing all the same. While we were eating, we talked to a woman who was clearly admiring how brave we were for eating right out in the open near a lake with no escape route in bear country. She told us she was deathly afraid of bears. Yep! On some level, I guess we all are. By that time we'd seen enough of western Canada to take a pretty good educated guess that we weren't going to be seeing any bears during our lunch stop. We ended up being right.

Lunch view. Table for two lakeside, please.