In and around Golden

A few more pictures from in and around Golden to finish off this novel about our holiday.
We spent some time one nice afternoon to walk along the river bank of the Kicking Horse River and drive thru the town to see some of the landmarks.  The kids could have spent hours upon hours here throwing stones and changing water paths. The flow was still quite fast even though it was fall, and it was really nice that the water level was low.

Golden was built on the rail and became popular in the 1900s when it hired Swiss guides to help tackle the mountaineering. Several men moved in with their wives and to make them feel more at home the CPR built them homes in the sides of the mountain to resemble their Swiss mountain houses.   They are now empty and rundown but Andy humored me in my desire to find and look at these deserted houses which have so much history and are still a famous landmark of Golden.  

Time to go home!  The only road to the resort was over this one car wide bridge with wooden deck.  Considering the safety consious society and such that we live in today it was quite surprising that they hadn't updated this bridge and made it bigger and more usable, but it was quite fun to drive over time and time again.

Our constant ray of sunshine :)

Bugagaboos and Conrad Kain hut

Honestly, have you ever heard of Bugaboo Provincial Park?
Neither had I.
Neither had any of us actually.
But it got stumbled upon while Andy was searching the web for one "nice" hike to do with Seth and Tristan.  That was one of his personal goals on our trip, to have one good, rugged, climbing, scramble in with the big boys.  The Conrad Kain Hut and trip came up and it seemed like a perfect fit so early one morning he took off to this very isolated and secluded area in the Rockies between Golden and Radium Hot Springs.  If you are interested in the geography of this sort of thing click here to read all about it, you will leave feeling like you learned something new for the day!
This was more of an advanced hike for the guys in the family, and they were extremely excited to go as this park had been closed due to the forest fire smoke till the very day they went. I would not be surprised if they were the first people to hike here in possibly weeks.  After 50 km of slowly driving down a windy gravel road they made it to the Purcell Mountains which are known for its rugged granite mountains and spires.
In the above picture you will notice the van has chicken wire and stakes around it. This is provided at the parking lot since it is known that porcupines like to enter the brake systems of vehicles to lick the salt and thereby, eat thru the brake lines. Which obviously is a very terrible thing to have happen to you when you are miles and miles down a logging road up in the Rocky mountains. So proper precautions were taken and the van secured.

Certain areas were secured with chains and a small ladder.

Victory!  Made it to the goal. 700 metre elevation gain in 3 hours.

Note how you can see the glacier folding and flowing down.

The Hut is behind the boulder. Where's Waldo? (Seth and Tristan?)

The kids were happy there was some chain to hang on to.

Kicking Horse Gondola

On one of our "outing" days we bought tickets for the gondola ride to the peaks at the Kicking Horse Resort.   The days were continually getting colder but this was a bit of a warmer day so we thought it would be a good day to go up for a ride and see the views and do one of the hikes.  We were mistaken in how far up we were going as it was extremely cold up at the top of the mountain!  Close to freezing!  What a view though, it was really amazing being level with the tops of all the mountains in the area and seeing the valleys below.  Incredible.  And almost scarily high.  There were some really neat trails we could do but found out quickly that Marla and Abby were going to freeze on us and Rowan was a bit clumsy and I could just imagine him tumbling down the side of the mountain (!!) so I decided to return to the condo and let Andy "quickly" do a hike with Seth.  I'm glad we had the opportunity on a clear day to go to the summit, as the views were really worth it.  Next time - more clothing required.  :)

We started a trail, then turned around. :)

See how high we were - all the peaks behind us.

Myself and the four kids watching Andy and Seth continue hiking from the Gondola.

And Andy also took one of us in the Gondola! :) Seriously, look at that ridge though! Beautiful.

Below are the pictures from the ridge walk Andy and Seth did.  Seth loved it and was such a good sport.  It makes my heart happy that Andy can do these things with a son now.  How special is that?

Incredible views. And incredible danger to my eyes ;)

This final picture below is one Seth loves.  He thought a snowboard bench was the neatest thing ever.  Till he found out the reason it was there was in memory of someone who died there in a snowboarding accident.  Still, he asked I put it up :)