Monday 26 May 2008

Northern Lights Wolf Centre & Wapta Falls

The cloud was still hanging around with a bit of drizzle today but it didn't stop us setting off for Yoho.
Right at the border we made a wildlife stop. For the second week in a row, I've seen a Black Bear feeding on the railway tracks. I figured it had something to do with green chutes between the tracks, but I found out today that they are actually eating the spilled grain from the rail cars. With the amount of rail traffic, there must be quite the trail of food on the tracks for the bears. The sad thing is that it lures the bears to the rail only to line them up in front of a train. The bears don't see the trains as a threat and quite often don't move off the track until too late.

Northern Lights Wolf Centre

Today we took the trip out to Golden B.C. (we stayed overnight at Lake Louise). The Northern Lights Wolf Centre is about 10kms to the West of Golden. They have 6 captive wolves at the centre. They were all born in captivity & get exercised/walked without a leash every day. You can even pay $159+tax to go on the walks with them (we may do that later in the year).
Wylie (above & below) is the largest of the males & is very used to people and tends not to hide like some of the others. He seemed very relaxed even with a bunch of people gorking at him.
All the wolves seem to lay around like lazy labradors when there isn't food or a walk in the offering.
Wapta Falls
On the way back from Golden we stopped just inside the western Yoho park boundary at Wapta Falls. It's about a 3km walk to the base of the falls. Unfortunately the weather was against us (as it was all weekend) so the photos didn't come out that well. Its quite the impressive volume of water flowing over the falls, particularly at the moment with the snow melting & a fair amount of rain.
It's just a shame there wasn't a bit more sun. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.