Mon, Sep 8 Banff

We left Radium Hot Springs this morning & quickly arrived at the ranger station at Kootenay National Park. After the ranger robbed us of $136.40 (the cost of an annual park pass!), we were on our way.
We drove through the park to a short hike to Paint Pots. This is where the coil is colored ochre (orange) by minerals leached out of spring water. Indians (First Nation) and later commercially mined for pigment coloring. This stopped when Kootenay became a national park.

We drove a little further to Marble Canyon (above & below) where the canyon was carved out by water to create a long deep canyon. The canyon looks like marble but it's limestone.





We rounded out our hikes with a hike to lower Consolation Lake. The hike starts at Moraine Lake, where 9 yrs ago when we were here, Tom fell through the melting snow and he scraped the carp out of his leg. His leg was bleeding like crazy so we had to go to a med clinic and never got to hike at Moraine Lake.
If you like to (rock) scramble - this is the place! We scrambled up the giant rock pile at the end of Moraine Lake and another scramble at Consolation Lake.
There are beautiful views of nearby mountains in the interior of the Rockies.
Mt Bident (2 teeth) and Mt Quadra (4 summits) to the south, then there's me with Mt Babel and Mt Fay behind us to the north.