This morning after I woke up I spent an hour and a half just listening to birds chirping away. At the same time, the sun had already come over the mountains and was warming up my face. I've never held much interest in birds and cannot identify more than a couple of kinds, but listening to them was relaxing. It was almost as if one would call and another would answer. I read ML's article on birding last night and learned that there are indeed blue grouse in this area. Just last week my pharmacist asked me if blue grouse actually existed; funny how he'd randomly ask me that question and then I'd find the answer in an article by someone I know shortly thereafter.
Then this afternoon I set out to tackle Killer B, a challenging MTB racecourse at the Nordic Centre. There are so many trails there that I had a hard time finding all the right junctions, but I did aim for the uphill - up, up, and up towards Mount Rundle. I passed such difficult singletrack trails as the Laundry Chute (quite vertical), and EKG (more vertical to get your heart racing). The first few kilometres of Killer B tested both my uphill endurance and being in a backcountry type area all by myself. The forest was dense, bear and cougar warning signs were spaced very closely together all alongside the trail, and I encountered no-one else. I was proud to have made it through that portion on my own, but I'll need to rig something up to get the bear spray right onto my bike as my cycling pack doesn't have an extra outside pocket. Once through the dense forest I hit a larger trail called Meadowview, which I followed to a large meadow overlooking mountains all around - Rundle Range, Cascade, Lady Macdonald, Three Sisters, and Chinaman's Peak. To get some more distance in and pick up the pace, I then followed the Banff Trail before returning on the paved path used primarily for roller skiing and cycling. By that time I was out almost of water (it's hot out here today), so I took a walk to Quarry Lake, a local hangout that I haven't been to since about junior high school. There I scoped out the Highline Trail, which I have next on my agenda for Canmore mountain biking. There are so many trails out here, it's really hard to imagine unless you scope out all of the trail networks. Lots of easy in-town stuff, but also a huge amount of technical singletrack. And none of it is really more than a 5-10 minute drive away.
Nordic Centre trail network
Killer B
Meadowview Trail
Banff Trail
Quarry Lake
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