Canada-US border
We left with an international group of about 20 others this morning on a guided walk across the Canada-US border. There were a few Canadians, a couple from Germany, a mother with her young daughter from Australia though now living in Kabul, Afghanistan, and a larger number of Americans. We were led by a US park ranger, and a Canadian park interpreter, and walked along the lake to the south end of Waterton Lake. Although the hike information said 13 km, it registered as closer to 16 on my GPS. Though the hike climbed up and down a bit, it never rose too steeply, which was a good thing today, as it was very hot.
Bear scratch tree and US Ranger
We stopped about every half hour to get the group recombined, and listen to information about the park from the guides. Yesterday we had seen a number of trees wrapped with barbed wire. It didn’t seem to make much sense as to why someone would do that, but today the ranger explained it to us. The bears rub and scratch themselves on trees, and when they do so they rub off some of their hair. The park naturalists have identified the trees used by the bears for this purpose, and when the bears scratch, they leave behind some hair stuck in the wire. By studying the hair they’ve been able to establish that there are about 700 different bears in the park.
We ate lunch at the boundary. Shortly before that I got to play the role of one of the US park founders, and had a script to read about the international boundary and formation of the peace park. Once we’d crossed the border the trail became quite a bit flatter, but the vegetation was much more dense. There were many place where the cow parsnip and other plants and grasses were so tall (more than waist high) and thick that you could barely see the trail.
Near the end of the trail you cross the Waterton River on a suspension bridge. Though the bridge is about a metre across, it isn’t very heavily constructed so had a weight limit of one hiker at a time. Shortly beyond that we reached the Goat Haunt customs station where we had to clear US Customs, and got our passports stamped. Really, that is a tourist exercise, since the customs officials ride in and out each day from Canada on the ferry, and I visited with one of them on the boat ride back down Waterton Lake.