Travel Fool’s gold & polliwogs Michelle’s 12-year-old sister Jacqueline’s favourite discoveries were the old miner’s cabin and abandonedmine. We peered down the 25-metre-deep shaft where miners once lowered each other with buckets and pickaxes. “People searched for gold here in the 1880s, but they found only iron pyrite,” explained Ally. “Later, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, they mined lead, zinc, copper and semi-precious minerals.” We scoured the ground and found chunks of greenmalachite, blue azurite and gold! It was only glittering fool’s gold, according to Ally, but it was still pretty. Nearby, in a collapsed wooden cabin dating from the mid-’60s, we discovered a rusty horseshoe, a broken shovel, a dented tea kettle and an old Nabob coffee tin, which we left undisturbed to delight future hikers. A few metres away, we found an old mining claim stake. As we continued our hike along a pond, Michelle stopped us suddenly in our tracks, shouting, “Look! Tadpoles! Remember the place near Calgary where we used to catch them?” She collected a couple of darting polliwogs in an empty water bottle. After proudly showing them to the other hikers, she released the tadpoles back into the pond. At dinner that evening, we met 12-yearold Callum and his grandmother Kit, who returned ecstatic from their day on the Mt. Nimbus Via Ferrata. Accompanied by a mountaineering guide and attached to safety cables, they climbed up iron rungs, traversed a suspension bridge and rappelled down a towering peak. We envied the people on the lodge-to-lodge program. They heli-hopped and hiked from CMH Bobbie Burns to CMH Bugaboos Lodge as we headed back to Calgary’s airport. Our lodge’s guest book revealed that others shared our feelings about heli-hiking. “We’re absolutely helicopter hooked,” wrote someone from Toronto. “It was the adventure of a lifetime, filled with breathtaking views, great food and new friends,” noted an American woman. “Outstanding scenery and guides above expectations,” added a hiker from England. One person wrote for all of us: “We came.We saw.We hiked. And all we want to do is come back!” Resources For more information visit www.cmhsummer.com or call 1-800-661-0252 toll-free. Barb & Ron Kroll publish the trip-planning website www.KrollTravel.com Peering down the shaft of an abandoned mine Examining rocks and minerals found near an abandoned mine Discovering an old miner’s cabin CSANews | SPRING 2020 | 21
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