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Hooray for hiking season!

Posted on May 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

We have been cooped up indoors for too long. But not anymore. This weekend we embarked on our first hike of the season — and our first hike ever with a dog — in Fernie. What’s more, we managed to complete the four-kilometre, two-hour hike without carrying the puppy, or either child, and before it started raining (a small miracle).

Posing with Piper in front of Fairy Creek Falls.

Our destination: Fairy Creek Falls, a thundering (well, this time of year, anyway) waterfall that mists you on a warm spring day. Serious hikers might pooh-pooh this trail, but except for the hills, it is kid-friendly — we saw a garter snake and a bunch of snails. It also appeals to dogs: streams for drinking water, sticks to carry. And I have to say, with its 120 metre elevation gain, it’s a good hiking reintroduction for adults.

Fairy Creek Tral is one of Fernie's many family-friendly hikes.

Fairy Creek Trail is one of Fernie’s many family-friendly hikes.

Four clicks doesn’t sound like a great distance, but for two children and a 12-week-old puppy it is an epic journey. Piper spent the first kilometre pulling at her leash and panting maniacally; I thought she was going to keel over until we came across a small stream. Avery grumbled at the first sight of a hill (Memo: “I like hiking downhill and on flats best.”), while Bennett ambled along in the rear singing to himself and completely unfocused on the task at hand (e.g. reaching the waterfall sometime before dark).

Me: “One of us should stay back there with Bennett.”

Blake: “He’s fine.”

Me: “But what if a cougar snatches him?”

Blake: “A single older woman can have him if she wants him.”

Unlike a regular adult hike, where you settle into a nice pace and enjoy the scenery, Blake and I vied to pawn off the dog on each other, and whoever didn’t have the puppy had to make sure Bennett didn’t fall into Fairy Creek. I shouldn’t grumble, really. The fact that both kids walked the whole way themselves (and that Bennett didn’t want to hold my hand the entire time) bodes well for an active summer. And Piper will have more stamina come July and August. So, thinking positively, I look forward to sharing more hiking adventures as the season unfolds.

Hiking in Fernie with “Nature Bob”

Posted on September 3, 2012 | 1 comment

My husband and I love hiking with our kids and we usually strike out on the trails solo as a family of four. But on Saturday we bumped into Fernie nature guide Bob Livsey — a.k.a. “Nature Bob” — at the top of the Timber Chair at Fernie Alpine Resort. With no hikes booked for the afternoon he asked if he could tag along as a guide while we hiked the Lost Boys loop, a 1.7-kilometre trail that descends to the Mammoth Droppings (giant boulders below Mammoth Peak) before climbing 100 metres to the Lost Boys Pass lookout. We said, “Sure!”

The best way to access alpine hikes at Fernie is to ride the Timber Chair. Sadly, summer operations ended this weekend.

Friends of ours and their two boys had come along for the fun, so our party of eight, plus Nature Bob, began the hike, curious what a hiking guide could add to the experience. A lot, it turns out.

Walking through dense forest before we reached the impressive Mammoth Droppings boulders, Bob pointed out ripe huckleberries that the kids immediately gobbled down. He also showed us the delicious-looking yet poisonous twisted stalk red berries, and explained that purple elderberries are only edible when cooked. Good to know.

Nature Bob points to the top of Mammoth Peak, from which large boulders have fallen to form the “Mammoth Droppings” in the background.

Nature Bob has been leading hikes at Fernie Alpine Resort for 12 years, and he teaches skiing there in the winter, so he knows the mountain extremely well. He explained the rock formations and helped us find crinoid fossils in slabs of limestone. We also spotted a distant critter that looked like either a coyote or a fox; Bob used his binoculars to determine it was a coyote.

One in our party holds up two limestone slabs to show off the crinoid fossils.

Bob loved that our kids and our friend’s boys delighted in finding caterpillars, catching grasshoppers, watching chipmunks and jumping over rocks at the Mammoth Droppings. He also liked that we asked lots of questions and seemed prepared for the unpredictable late-summer weather (it was 20C at the bottom of Timber Chair and probably 10C at the top, some 700 metres higher). “Some people show up for alpine hikes wearing flip-flops,” he lamented. “And some folks just go, go, go, without taking in what they’re seeing. It’s like they’re running a race.” Yep, with four kids aged four to 11 in tow, that was not us. We were all about sloooow hiking.

The children loved jumping over rocks at the Mammoth Droppings, the hike highlight.

We never made it to the Lost Boys Pass lookout (the downside of slow hiking) but that’s OK. It was fun to explore part of the mountain with someone in the know. And that way, contrary to the name of the trail, it ensured we didn’t get lost.

Nature Bob runs guided hikes throughout the summer at Fernie Alpine Resort. The season is now over, but you can e-mail him next summer at naturebob@telus.net, or call the resort’s guest services at 250-423-2435 to enquire about guided hikes.