Soon after we returned to Jasper town after our trip to Athabasca Falls on 27 August, we signed up with a local tour company (Maligne Adventures) for a Wildlife Search Tour in the evening. We believed that would be a good way to see some of the wildlife in this part of Canada such as the elk, bear, moose, sheep and deer in their natural habitat.
In the end, the vehicle used for the land tour was not meant for off-road driving as we had expected. The tour was done entirely on well tarmacked road covering the initial 40Km or so of the stretch of the highway from Jasper towards Edmonton.
The tour lasted about two and a half hours. All in all, we saw plenty of wild mountain goats, a lone white mountain goat and an elk. Not a very fruitful excursion as most participants had expected.
We did learn some interesting facts about the mountain goats. The exceptional characteristic of this animal is its rock climbing skill. They can surmount terrifying heights and seemingly impossible-to-scale cliff faces. The Guide explained that this animal has special hooves that give them incredible grip and traction on rocky inclined terrain.
We did learn some interesting facts about the mountain goats. The exceptional characteristic of this animal is its rock climbing skill. They can surmount terrifying heights and seemingly impossible-to-scale cliff faces. The Guide explained that this animal has special hooves that give them incredible grip and traction on rocky inclined terrain.
 |
| White mountain goat perched high on steep cliff. |
 |
| Typical white mountain goat - Courtesy of web site. |
The tour ended at Lake Pyramid before returning to Jasper town. It was 7.45pm at Lake Pyramid that we managed to see a lone elk foraging by the lake side.
 |
| Lake Pyramid. |
*************************************************
As it turned out, we had much better fortune the next day when we drove from Jasper to Edmunton. We saw a bull elk crossing the road which caused a temporary shutdown of the traffic. Drivers and passengers were quite prepared to wait and well entertained by this animal which took its own sweet time to slowly cross the road!
A bit further down the road, we were entertained by two bull elks locking horns with one another.
At another location of this highway, we saw a herd of wild goats looking for food oblivious of all the onlookers!
This unexpected encounter more or less erased our memory of the lack of excitement the day before as far as wildlife search was concerned.
No comments:
Post a Comment