Nihahi Ridge

Update 1: Added two 'couleur locale' stories
Update 2: riff on a French literature and early travel to Southern Canadian Rocky Mtns.

Looking W toward the Front Ranges on Nihahi Ridge, S Alberta Rocky Mtn. Foothills

I spent the summer of 1985 in the Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains mapping the Front Ranges just past Nihahi Creek. This is in the Kananaskis Public Land Use Zone (PLUZ) of southwestern Alberta. A Park Ranger helicopter took our gear in, we hiked in and the chopper moved our camp twice. The third move never happened: forest fires in Southeaster British Columbia across the water divide requisitioned the chopper. So we left the gear behind, and Park Rangers called us when the chopper was free to pick up our gear at the local Ranger Station North of Canyon Creek, the next creek North of Little Elbow Creek access point to Nihahi Ridge.

I had one assistant and two foreign visitors, geologists as this was geological mapping for then Geological Survey of Canada now Natural Resources Canada. One was from Universidad de Cantabria in Santander, Cantabria, Northwestern Spain. The other was from University of Kochi later  Kochi Women’s University from Kochi,  Kochi Prefecture, Shikoku Island, Southern Japan. We all did structural geology.

Little Elbow Creek is fascinating: it cuts thru the cliff-forming Devonian reefs (the kind oil is produced from near Edmonton, Alberta) and skirts Mts. Remulus and Romus; the pair are separated by a gash caused by a cross-fault (the valley behind in the photo is its Northward trace)... I remember a pair of golden eagles soaring above! I later took geology friends via mountain bike as these valleys do get longish. We later flew it with GSC / NRCAN via helicopter to view fabulous structures uncovered then and described here. KMZ file to recreate the Google Earth view below is here. Click images to enlarge.

Mts. Romulus (L) & Remus (R), Kananaskis Park, SW Alta.

At the end of the season, we exited via Canyon Creek the next one North. It's called due to the cliff sides it cut. We actually saw suspended platforms high up: we later learned from Park Rangers that they were Stoney Nakoda (Iyarhe Nakoda) funeral platforms; vultures would pick the bones clean that eventually fell to the ground and were washed away. We were asked not to publish photos or locations to respect the funeral site.

Later on when the Park Rangers called, we went to fetch the gear the choppers had returned to the Ranger Station nearby. The Japanese geologist was still with me: his wife had come over for a visit, we took them to Heritage Park, and he accompanied me to pick up the gear; as we drove up the Forestry Trunk road, we were suddenly confronted with a wall of Hereford cattle (see here) driven down from Front Ranges Crown Land summering to Foothills ranch wintering. It was an experience to stop the truck and simply let them stream by, with a cowboy and a cowgirl tipping their hats to thank us for stopping. Only problem was my visitor left his camera in his backpack in the bed at the back of the  three-quarter ton truck... and we couldn't open the doors to fetch it with cattle streaming by, could we? “Too bad”, he said, “I won't have photos of this wonderful experience”... how Japanese! Like my hack in the foothills (see here), some experiences are best lived, for neither pics nor vids do them justice really.

When photographing humpback whales surface lunge-feeding in Monterey Bay CA a decade or so later, I found it robbed me of the experience as I was fumbling with my telephoto... so I simply quit & watched instead!

Later on still, I took my dad visiting from Southwestern France he had returned to after his Calgary tenure. He took the photo atop among our other earlier iconic pics here:

 

hover mouse over: forward backward arrows, tap 3 dots: full caption

Footnote

In the second last photo the Valley of the Ten Peaks look like a row of marching soldiers. Victor Hugo described something similar in the Pyrénées of Southern France:

« Les Pyrénees, rangs de soldats en marche, 
S'étendaient à l'horizon »
“The Pyrenees, a line of soldiers on the march
Extended across the horizon”

My late first father-in-law JP (see In Memoriam) and I imagined Victor Hugo at the Rockpile at the head of Moraine Lake musing about Charlemagne's army and Roland after the Spanish War, as he penned “Aymerillot”, part of the “Cycle of Charlemagne” in Book 1 of “La Légende des Siècles”.

It's actually the version taught in French schools, the canonical version being (italics replaced the above): 

Cependant il chemine ; au bout de trois journées Il arrive au sommet des hautes Pyrénées. Là, dans l’espace immense il regarde en rêvant ; Et sur une montagne, au loin, et bien avant Dans les terres, il voit une ville très forte, Ceinte de murs avec deux tours à chaque porte.

Yet on he journeys; after three days’ travel, He reaches the peaks of the high Pyrenees. There, gazing dreamily into the vast expanse, And on a mountain, far away and deep Inland, he sees a mighty city, Ringed by walls with two towers at every gate.

A gem of poetry, even AI translation, JP & I preferred the version taught in my school...

Endnote

“La Légende des Siècles” was published 1859 & Victor Hugo died in 1885. Could he have possibly travelled to the Southern Canadian Rockies as he did to the Southern French Pyrénées? 

Read the full story here, summary: They just missed the Canadian Pacific Railway’s major push to promote Banff as a tourist destination: beginning 1885, the Canadian government and the railway started developing and publicizing the hot springs; the development happened, however, in 1888 for Banff, 1890–1894 for Lake Louise, 1902–1911 for Moraine Lake, and 1907–1911 for Jasper. So in a word: no.

In Memoriam

My first late father-in-law John P. Manry (1922-2018) was an avid mountaineer, who did first ascents in Kananaskis Country, incl. Mt. Lorette in 1952. He loved French literature & military history, and he told me about the “Joffre Group” described at the end of link above. Again, my late dad Greg Zolnai (1931-2019) took the banner photo.