Kootenay is bordered on the north by Yoho, and on the east by Banff and Mount Assiniboine. The Continental Divide forms the division between Kootenay and Banff. On the Banff side, water flows into the Bow River, then into the Saskatchewan River system and on to Hudson Bay. West of the Divide, in Kootenay National Park, water drains first into the Vermilion River, then enters the Kootenay River and finally the Columbia, which empties into the Pacific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon.

The park is approximately 85 km from north to south, with an average width of 15 km (the maximum is 25 km). Total area is 1406 km². Shape and size are primarily determined by the 94 km of Highway 93, the Kootenay Parkway, which traverses the park. For most of its length, the highway parallels either the Kootenay or Vermilion rivers.

Like so many others, I first came to Kootenay because it was on the way to Banff. We spent one night in the village of Radium Hot Springs and then hurried on to the more well-known attractions of Banff. We overlooked most of the attributes that make Kootenay such a special place. Many years passed before I realized just how much we had missed.

Where else can you find a park that contains both cactus and glaciers? It certainly won't be in Canada. Can you envision a more spectacular entrance to any park than Sinclair Canyon? There are grizzly bears, two species of lions, even elephants. However, I must confess that the most common "lions" are tiny insects (ant lions), and that the elephants-pink, yet-only move when a breeze ruffles their alpine flowerbeds.

Kootenay has no Grand Canyon, but Marble Canyon is a worthy substitute. In the same way, those who yearn for warm sandy beaches might be disappointed, but close your eyes while soaking in the 40°C water of the Radium Hot Springs Pools and you can almost hear palm fronds whispering overhead. As for all those tropical flowers, there's no need to head south to find orchids-22 different species grow in the park! And you can search for them without having to worry about poisonous snakes. Keep your eyes peeled for Kootenay's boa constrictors, though. Rubber boas are infrequently found in the vicinity of the hot pools.

If you really want to experience wilderness serenity, you're more likely to find it in Kootenay than in some of the better-known parks. The number of backcountry campers is strictly limited and over 250 km of trails lead to places like 350 m-high Helmet Falls and the internationally famous Rockwall. In the summer, hikers marvel at the floral beauty of alpine meadows, while autumn trekkers are dazzled by the golden display of subalpine larches.

Yes, Kootenay National Park has numerous features that make it a unique treasure, but this holds true for all of Canada's national parks. Ultimately, Parks Canada intends to protect representative examples of each of the countries' 39 natural terrestrial landscapes. Almost two-thirds of that goal has been realized.

Attitudes have changed drastically since the discovery of hot springs on the east slope of the Rockies led to the establishment of Banff, Canada's first national park, in 1885. The formation of the park had nothing to do with conservation and preservation. Representatives of the federal government and officers of the Canadian Pacific Railway saw only dollar signs when they looked at the springs. Plans were to make the area a "pleasuring ground for the rich."

That was only one of many mistakes made in the development of Canada's outstanding system of national parks, but errors were to be expected in the beginning. It was a different time and the whole idea of national parks was a new concept. It wasn't until 1930, with the passage of the National Parks Act, that Canadian parks were even protected from logging, mining and other commercial ventures. And it took a further 58 years before stiffer amendments to the act gave priority to the "maintenance of ecological integrity through protection of natural resources." In other words: "Is it good for the ecosystem?"

Obviously, ecosystems-meaning the interaction of communities of plants and animals with their environments-weren't considered when park boundaries were established. Now we realize that Kootenay is only a small part of the Central Rockies Ecosystem, an area the size of Switzerland. In order to ensure that all native species are thriving in as natural a state as possible-something called ecological integrity-the park cannot exist as a separate entity. Kootenay's wilderness is always at risk from access and developments on adjacent provincial lands.

While some backcountry areas are threatened, there is no comparison to the pressure in the valleys. These are the transportation corridors and the site of most development. With park visitors coming in ever-increasing numbers, maintaining ecological integrity in the face of internal development becomes more difficult. Highway improvements and the provision of tourist facilities are examples. Compounding the problem is the high cost of operating our parks. The number one priority of national parks is protection, and that doesn't come cheaply.

We once thought life would go on as it always had within park boundaries-even with a few more humans tromping around. But lines drawn on a map do not deter wind, water nor wolves. The key to ecological integrity within Kootenay and the other parks depends on how well we look after the entire ecosystem. It's a daunting job.

On your trip through the park, take time to wander a few trails, smell the flowers, enjoy our quiet campgrounds and maybe even take in an evening program. Hopefully, you'll begin to develop feelings similiar to mine-that Kootenay National Park is a valuable jewel in the crown of the Rocky Mountains. But always bear in mind that unlike a diamond, Kootenay cannot survive alone.

Who Came First and Why?
It was once believed the Kootenay or Ktunaxa (tun-ah-hah) people (the first term is actually an Anglicized version of the latter, which means people from beyond the hills) weren't permanent residents of the area until the 1700s. However, most archeologists, as well as the Ktunaxa themselves, are now convinced the tribe has been here for 10,000 years or more. It only seems logical to assume an area as rich in wildlife as the Kootenay and Vermilion River valleys has been populated much longer than 300 years.

It is known that the Ktunaxa regularly crossed the Rockies via White Man Pass (south of the park boundary), Simpson Pass and Vermilion Pass to hunt buffalo on the plains. Aboriginal peoples also used the Kootenay River route as a north-south travel corridor, especially when trading posts on the North Saskatchewan River were established.

There is little doubt the Ktunaxa bathed in Radium Hot Springs-perhaps to ease the pain of arthritis or to help cleanse and heal injuries received in battle. A number of other tribes, such as the Peigans, Bloods and Stoneys, may have also come to soak in the hot water. The presence of pictographs near the hot springs (unfortunately destroyed by construction) was a possible indication that aboriginal peoples found the area sacred. Another sacred area was the Paint Pots, which was also of economic benefit to First Nations people (see page 83).

Undoubtedly, the first non-native people in the area were trappers and fur traders, but the initial recorded visit was by Sir George Simpson in 1841. Simpson was governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and he was trying to go around the world in record time. He came into the Vermilion River drainage via the pass later named after him (by James Hector in 1858), travelled down the Kootenay and crossed to the Columbia through what is now called Sinclair Pass.

Simpson was a man in a hurry. Like too many modern travellers who want to see all the Rocky Mountain parks in a few days, he didn't spend much time here. In an era when other expeditions might take months to cross the country (the 1857 Palliser Expedition took an entire year to travel from Lake Superior to the Rockies), Simpson crossed the Rockies in only five days. In fact, he drove his men so hard they called him "the little emperor"-but probably not to his face. Yet, this short visit is immortalized not only by the place names but by a monument (see page 71) near the junction of the Simpson and Vermilion rivers.

Following in Simpson's footprints was James Sinclair. Sinclair, although not a member of the Hudson's Bay Company (he didn't join them until 1883), had agreed to guide 23 families from Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) to Walla Walla, Washington. The purpose was to establish a foothold for the company in the fur-rich areas south of the 49th parallel. He actually left Fort Garry before Simpson, but "the little emperor" overtook the cavalcade en route. Simpson had directed Sinclair to undertake the perilous journey, and arranged for the party to travel through Athabasca Pass in what is now Jasper National Park.
After Simpson rushed off to continue his round-the-world journey, James Sinclair chose to ignore the governor's directions. Sinclair had disagreed with the company before, especially in their treatment of the Métis of the Red River area. Thus, he elected to journey south and found his own route through the Rockies (White Man Pass). Upon reaching the Kootenay River valley, he followed Simpson's footsteps over the western range and down past the hot springs. If Sinclair had travelled according to plan, a stream and pass wouldn't bear his name, let alone a canyon.

Another early visitor to the Columbia Valley was Father Pierre de Smet. In 1845, Father de Smet followed Sinclair's route in reverse by going up Sinclair Creek, crossing the Kootenay River and following the Cross River up to White Man Pass. There he supposedly erected a small cross, which led to the naming of the river. Father de Smet also erected another cross, which can be seen in the church on the Shuswap Indian Reserve south of the village of Radium Hot Springs.

The only other noteworthy exploration of the area came with the Palliser Expedition of 1857-1860. The British government sent Captain John Palliser to determine how feasible the area was for future development. One member of his party, geologist James Hector, led a branch of the expedition on several excursions into this part of the Rockies, naming many of the features. Hector is credited with being the first non-native to cross Vermilion Pass (1858). In fact, he noted the pass was the most feasible route of any he had seen for "wheeled conveyances." On that trip he ended up in what is now Yoho National Park, where he was kicked in the chest by a horse and taken for dead-but miraculously recovered. That's how Yoho came to have both the Kicking Horse River and Kicking Horse Pass.

Historical notes about the Kootenay area for the next twenty-some years are absent, until John McKay staked a homestead along the Columbia River in the 1880s. His claim happened to include Radium Hot Springs.

History of the Radium Hot Pools
Most sources list Roland Stuart, an English squire, as the first legally registered owner of the hot springs. Stuart paid the munificent sum of $1 an acre to receive a Crown grant for the 160 acres surrounding the pool. He was the first to see the economic potential of the springs, but initially he expected to reap his rewards from sales of the bottled water, not from bathers.

In 1911 a British medical journal suggested there might be radium in the water. (By coincidence, that was also the first year it became possible to drive to the springs-see the next section.) Research by McGill University in 1913 showed this to be true. Stuart realized his slightly radioactive spring water might have more curative power than the famous springs at Bath, England. He envisioned even more financial possibilities-if he could come up with enough money for development. That dilemma was solved, at least temporarily, by multimillionaire St. John Harmsworth. Harmsworth was paralyzed from the neck down when he first came to Radium Hot Springs, and spent several hours each day suspended in the hot water. After four months of treatment, he could move his feet. That meant a $20,000 contribution to Stuart, who constructed a concrete pool and a log bathhouse before heading for England at the start of the First World War.

Stuart still hadn't returned in 1920 when negotiations between the federal and provincial governments were concluded and the formation of Kootenay Dominion Park was announced. Stuart's agent, Earle Scovil, couldn't get any communication from his boss, and encouraged the government to expropriate the springs. The feds did as Scovil suggested in 1922, a year before the Banff-Windermere Road was completed. Stuart eventually received about $40,000 for his $160 investment, but even at that time others placed the value of the springs at half a million dollars.

In the years to follow, the pool was modified slightly and a more elaborate bathhouse was built. The bathhouse burned down during the winter of 1948 and was replaced by the present stone building. The new facilities, including a second (cool) pool, that was two-thirds Olympic size, were officially opened in 1951. And the hot springs permanently disappeared from the public's eyes under the concrete of the hot pool.

Major renovations during the winter of 1967/68 meant removal of the old pool and the installation of a collecting system for all the hot water sources. The changes created a slight decrease in water temperature to the present 40°C. Another round of renovations, initiated in 1997, primarily altered the building, but a hot/cold plunge pool was also added.

More information on the hot pools is available in the book Nipika, sold at information centres and at the pools.

Whose Idea was this Kootenay Park, Anyhow?
Travel in the Columbia Valley prior to 1900 was primarily north-south. But settlers led by Robert Bruce, an Invermere business man, began clamoring for a more direct route to markets in Banff and Calgary. This led to a meeting with the premier of British Columbia and a proposal to build a road via the Vermilion and Kootenay River valleys, crossing Vermilion Pass as Hector had recommended in 1858.

Construction from the Columbia Valley began in 1911, and for the first time there was a road to the hot springs. No attempt was made to enter the canyon, instead, the new road followed an old packtrail around the defile. In the next few years the road was pushed almost over Sinclair Pass, but lack of funding and a raging conflict on the other side of the world brought work to a stop.

By 1919 the "war to end wars" was over, but the road was far from complete. The province didn't have enough funds to finish the work, so a deal was made with the federal government. The Banff-Windermere Road Agreement stipulated that the feds would build the highway in exchange for 5 mi. (8 km) of land on either side of the road for a national park. The park became a reality in 1920, three years before the road to Castle Junction in Banff National Park was completed.

Looking back, the choice of Vermilion Pass and the two river valleys for the highway seems logical. But why Sinclair Pass? There are other passes both to the north and south that would seem to be more feasible routes. However, none had hot springs along the way-hot springs owned by a silver-tongued Roland Stuart with friends in high places.

The first road over the Canadian Rockies became a reality, and the nation gained a new national park.

Mountains and Carpets-Laying the Foundation
Picture a big rug. Put one side against the wall and push on the opposite edge. The carpet rises in folds, but it never breaks. Now, imagine the earth's crust as the carpet-but let's add more layers-layers of rock. These layers have formed in the shallow water at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. They are composed of material eroded from old mountain ranges, plus the calcareous skeletons of countless aquatic invertebrates. At least that's the simplified version of where I always thought those layers of sedimentary rock came from-the same version that unsuspecting visitors had been getting from me for years-just as if I actually knew something about geology.

But after seven years, something started to bother me (besides my conscience). I always ended any Stanley Glacier hike (see page 99) by showing fossil evidence of aquatic invertebrates to my group as proof of a rehearsed spiel recited earlier in the day. But I could never locate fossils on any of the other guided hikes. Certainly fossils can be found in many other areas of the park, but why aren't they more numerous? They're supposed to be the major component of limestone rock that forms most of the Canadian Rockies, aren't they? Why can you inspect slab after slab of rock on some mountains and find nary a fossil?

Lo and behold, a little digging in Ben Gadd's Handbook of the Canadian Rockies turned up some interesting facts about the formation of limestone. Even geologists were puzzled until the 1950s. Then they found that certain types of salt-water algae produce minute particles of calcium carbonate (CaCO3-calcite) that settle to the bottom when the algae die. Of course, algae are too soft to form a fossil, so animals have gotten all the credit. Yet, skeletal remains form only a very small portion of the limestone. It just goes to show that if you don't leave a few obvious signs, people tend to ignore you.

So, let's see-we've got tonnes of material collecting on the bottom of a shallow sea. After a few million years it's pretty thick, and the pressure at the bottom is so great things begin to heat up and all those sediments are squeezed together tighter than rush-hour commuters on a subway. Eventually they end up as sedimentary limy rock.

Restless Rocks
Now, let's dig a little deeper. Everybody knows the centre of the earth is quite a bit warmer than your Saturday night bath (that also has a lot to do with pressure from the weight above). If you aren't sure about that, stick your toe in the hot pool. The water in the pool seeped down just far enough to become steam (maybe 2.5 km), and then reversed course (see page 14). Imagine the heat at 100 km, 1000 km or all the way to the centre, 6336 km. At a great enough depth even the rocks begin to run. With all that heat, and liquid rock, the centre of the earth is far from static. It's more like a vat of boiling pudding. Yet, even though the hot pudding may be convulsing and churning, there is usually a pattern in the movements. Mix up a batch of pudding and throw in a few stale cookies. See if their journeys don't follow a pattern. (The good thing about this experiment is you can usually find some hungry friends to clean up.)

Rise of the Rockies
In a manner similiar to the movement of cookies in our hot pudding, currents in the earth's core move the harder, cooler rock layers above. These layers are divided into sections known as tectonic plates. The plates underlie the continents and even the oceans. About 200 million years ago, the plate underneath what is now North America, which had been drifting slowly eastward, changed directions. As it backed up, it ran over the plate underneath the Pacific Ocean, and in the process began scraping islands and reefs (the result of earlier volcanic activity) off the oceanic plate. The farther the continent went, the more land piled up on its western edge. It was like pushing a snow shovel down the walk, and watching the snow collect on the shovel. If the snow is wet enough, it becomes compressed.

Now we're back to the carpet! The accumulation of land to the west meant less room to the east, and those rock layers, those old compressed masses of skeletons, algae, sand, gravel, etc., started to fold like our rug. And the only way to go was up. In the formation of the Rockies, the layers may have risen as high as the Himalayas, but it wasn't any quick cataclysmic event like an earthquake or volcanic eruption. The whole process took tens of millions of years-years of wind and rain, freezing, thawing-all the same erosional forces that are constantly at work today. Thus, even as the mountains were bulldozed higher, that soft limestone was being continuously worn down.

Strangely, all that pushing and shoving between a rock and a hard place is harder on rocks than it is on carpets. The rock layers didn't just fold. Oh, no! There was cracking, breaking (faulting) and even shattering. Some layers not only broke, but were forced right over the tops of others. These thrust faults are very obvious in mountains near the Banff townsite. There is also an excellent example in the lower end of Sinclair Canyon.

It wasn't an orderly process-few natural processes are. There were layers folded up into anticlines, and layers folded down into synclines, layers forced into contortions that seem impossible in such an apparently stiff medium as rock. But rock under the enormous pressure of mountain building exerted over a long period of time will do amazing things. It all added up to our beautifully complex, but ever changing, Rocky Mountains.

Then came the glaciers.

Nature's Frigid Sculptors
So you think last winter was cold? Your grandpa says it didn't even come close to some of the ones when he was a kid-like the winter when it got so cold that all the words froze. What a racket when conversations thawed in the spring! Actually, it wasn't all that much before grandpa's time when the last Ice Age in the Canadian Rockies was happening. The Cavell glaciation, which is the Rockies equivalent of Europe's Little Ice Age, reached its maximum in the mid-1800s, and the glaciers didn't retreat much until the 1920s. Of course, North America's Little Ice Age (as the Cavell is also called) wasn't like the major ice ages of many, many grandpas ago when ice sheets covered much of North America.

All the ice didn't melt, even when temperatures warmed up. There are still plenty of glaciers hanging on in the Rockies and other parts of the world. However, for the most part, there is no comparison to the volume of ice that was once contained in the continental ice sheets. Even so, about 75 per cent of the world's supply of fresh water remains locked up as ice. That fact may prove to be vitally important to the future of life on earth.

The importance of glaciers in the Canadian Rockies, besides being the major source of water for rivers and lakes, is their sculpting ability. As I mentioned previously, erosion was wearing down the mountains even as they were still being pushed higher. However, the slow abrasion of wind and rain has a tendency to round off rough edges in the same manner as sandpaper when applied to a chunk of wood. Thus the older mountains of the world are usually low and gentle. Obviously, our relatively young Rockies, with their abundance of sharp peaks, narrow ridges and sheer cliffs, have been altered by other forces. That's where the glaciers come in.

What is a glacier? Where does it come from? Glaciers are found in areas where there is too much snowfall in the winter to melt over the summer. Wherever mountain ranges force moisture-laden air currents to rise and cool, as in the Canadian Rockies, precipitation in the form of sleet, hail or snow can whiten the peaks any time of the year. On high alpine slopes, especially those that face northeast, the same snow can remain for years and eventually become solid ice. Inevitably, when the ice depth exceeds 30 m, volume and pressure cannot be denied and the collective body of ice may begin to move. If it does, a glacier is born.

While glaciers are still at work in the Rockies, the major sculpting began over two million years ago. But numerous other ice ages have come and gone since. During some of these frigid times, the only evidence of land underneath the ice was the tips of the highest peaks sticking out like islands in the sea. These are known as nunataks. Obviously, glaciers don't move very fast (the average in the Rockies is about 15 m/year), but when you're talking about 100,000 years, the length of the Great Glaciation (Illinoian), a whole lot of grinding can go on.

The largest glaciers carved out broad U-shaped valleys like those that contain the Vermilion and Kootenay rivers. Smaller glaciers filled the side valleys between the peaks. However, not having the volume of the major glaciers, the little glaciers couldn't carve as deeply and their valleys were left "hanging." Stanley Glacier (see page 99) formed one of these hanging valleys. Some of our larger and more beautiful waterfalls drop from the edges of hanging valleys. Helmet Falls, 350 m high, is unquestionably the most spectacular example in Kootenay.

Spectacular is also the only word to describe what is probably the most impressive of glacier-carved peaks: Matterhorn-like peaks such as Mount Assiniboine, the best-known example in the area (see page 74). Another good example is Mount Verendrye, which is closer to the highway (see page 77). Horn peaks are created when a minimum of three glaciers work on different sides of a mountain, carving toward each other until a horn-shaped spur of rock remains. If a pair of glaciers grind away on opposite sides of a ridge, the effect is the same as sharpening a knife. Sometimes there is barely enough room left at the top to walk single file.

Glaciers are responsible for many of our mountain attractions, from the cliffs that climbers risk their necks on to most of our lovely mountain lakes. Generally, the lakes form behind rock debris (moraines) left by a retreating glacier. Other lakes are dammed up behind rockslides.

When we speak of a glacier retreating, it doesn't mean that it has shifted into reverse. Glaciers always move forward at a fairly constant pace, but at a certain elevation the annual rate of snow accumulation is equal to the annual rate of melting. Then the glacier seems to be standing still. However, in an exceptionally warm, dry year the ice melts faster than the glacier advances-and the icy river appears to be retreating. Just the opposite can happen in a cool, wet year.

At the present time, most glaciers in the Rocky Mountains are shrinking in size, primarily owing to warmer average temperatures. If this trend continues-and many scientists predict that it will unless we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere-future park visitors will only see the results of glaciers. The ice will be gone!

Lots of Big Rocks Here
Like the rest of the Canadian Rockies, most of Kootenay National Park is underlain by sedimentary rock, mostly limestone and quartzite. There are three principle mountain divisions, but a look at the map shows even more ranges. The higher peaks are found along the northeast boundary. They include Deltaform Mountain (at 3424 m, Kootenay's highest), and Mounts Allen (3310 m), Tuzo (3245 m) and Fay (3234 m). These four peaks, and a half dozen more, lie along the border of Banff National Park and form the famous backdrop to Moraine Lake: the Valley of the Ten Peaks. Kootenay's largest glacier lies on the south side of these peaks, but doesn't even have a name. The fact that such a natural wonder still remains nameless at the beginning of the 21st century is a good indication of the magnitude and richness of the region.

The Vermilion and Mitchell ranges form the spine of Kootenay. One of the most prominent features of the Vermilion Range is the Rockwall, a vertical barrier of limestone that guards the northwestern boundary of the park. Hiking the Rockwall is one of the must-dos in Kootenay, and four backcountry campsites (see page 79) are located along a 30 km stretch of the wall. Here are found the highest peaks in this area: Mount Foster (3204 m), Helmet Mountain (3139 m) and Mount Verendrye (3086 m). The park's highest and most spectacular waterfall, Helmet Falls (350 m), is an added attraction.

The Mitchell Range forms most of the southeastern boundary of the park. Magnificent peaks like Mount Harkin (2983 m) form a spectacular backdrop to the Kootenay River valley.

The ranges that are found on the southwestern boundary, Brisco and Stanford, are the most complex geologically. Although the highest peaks, Kindersley and Sinclair, don't reach 2700 m, the drive from the west park entrance to Sinclair Pass is one of the steepest in the Canadian Rockies. In addition, this narrow, twisting valley shows little sign of the glaciation that made most of the other valleys in the park wide and straight.

The southwestern corner of Kootenay includes dry benches bordering the Rocky Mountain Trench. The trench is a major valley that extends from the U.S. border to the Yukon. It is such a prominent geological landmark that astronauts in outer space asked about it on an early mission. Even the mighty Columbia is confined by the trench, following it for over 160 km north before the river pierces the barrier and turns south (see page 141). In the segment bordering Kootenay, this valley marks a major break in the earth's crust. The valley has dropped several kilometres, but rivers are working to fill up the gap. The streams are constantly depositing large amounts of sand and gravel eroded from the mountain ranges bordering the trench.

A Little Background Music
Kootenay National Park is primarily made up of three main ecoregions: montane, subalpine and alpine. The southern tip of the park also contains a brief portion of a unique dry section of the montane associated with the Rocky Mountain Trench. Although there is no clear boundary between regions-rarely are natural boundries well defined-each has its own characteristics in terms of rainfall, temperature, flora, fauna and other factors.

Driving through the park from southwest to northeast, you briefly pass through the dry montane area before climbing into the more typical montane. Beyond Kootenay Crossing, about halfway through the park, you enter the subalpine. Visitors to the highest ecoregion, the alpine, must travel on their own two feet. There are no roads.

The Dry Montane
This is the only place in Canada where you will find any environment comparable to that of the Rocky Mountain Trench protected in a national park. The most unusual resident of this arid habitat is the prickly pear cactus, which grows just inside the southwest boundary of the park. Growing alongside the cactus are other typical dry country plants like sagebrush and rabbitbrush. However, it's the bunchgrass, flourishing on the west-facing slopes, that has always been vital to wintering Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. Unfortunately, forest succession-trees invading the open slopes-has caused a decline in this traditional winter range.

The Montane
In this area of the Rocky Mountains, the montane zone ranges from an elevation of about 1000 m to anywhere from 1500 m to 1900 m. The southern portion of the park is primarily montane, and is characterized by forests of Douglas fir, white spruce, lodgepole pine and aspen. Under the trees, shrubs like buffaloberry, wild rose and juniper are commonly found. Bearberry (kinnikinnik) often covers the ground, usually accompanied by a variety of flowers and grasses.

This is the warmest and driest of the three ecoregions, and, consequently, it has an extensive history of forest fires. That accounts for the predominance of lodgepole pine in some areas. Their hard cones respond to sudden high temperatures and disperse thousands of heat-resistant seeds that germinate readily in the carbon-rich soil.

The greatest diversity of wildlife is found in this zone, including major populations of hooved mammals such as elk, white-tail deer and mule deer. Other large animals most often observed include coyotes, black bears and moose. Woodpeckers, ruffed grouse, ravens, juncos and chickadees are common birds. This region also has the highest concentration of Homo sapiens.

The Subalpine
Most of Kootenay National Park is classed as subalpine. Above Kootenay Crossing, the montane zone is found only along the rivers (including the Simpson) to Vermilion Crossing. Beyond Vermilion Crossing you are primarily driving through the subalpine zone.

This zone ranges from the upper levels of the montane up to about 2300 m or wherever the trees end. Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir are the predominant tree species at the lower levels of the subalpine, often growing in dense stands. At higher elevations, the forest opens up and subalpine larches appear. Stunted trees are the norm as you go higher. These often grow as flattened, waist-high islands called kruppelholz (a German word for crippled trees). Again, where forest fires have interrupted normal growth patterns in the last 150 years, as in the Vermilion Pass Burn (1968), lodgepole pines can outnumber all the other species of trees.

Common shrubs are false azalea, grouseberry and alder. In season, patches of blooming heather brighten the ground under the trees. Of course, high meadows in full flower are an unforgettable highlight of this region.

The thick forest cover ensures that a deep layer of snow blankets the area during most of the long winter, making travel difficult. There are very few signs of animal life at that time. However, evidence of smaller mammals such as porcupines and snowshow hares might be seen. Bird life is also scarce, but no matter what the season, the raucous calls of Clark's nutcrackers and gray jays often interrupt the silence.
For most of the larger animals such as elk and grizzly bears, the subalpine is a zone of transition. They pass through either going up in the early summer or down in the fall. However, the region is critical for a trio of forest carnivores: marten, fisher and lynx.

The Alpine
From about 2300 m on up, the environment is the harshest in the park. Here, in the alpine zone, there are no trees, and the growth patterns of other plants are altered drastically. In this barren region, even willows hug the ground to escape the incessant winds. Mosses and lichens are found on the rocks. Other hardy flora include mountain avens, moss campion and western anemone. Miniature versions of harebells, and some of the other flowers found at lower elevations can also be seen.

As you might imagine, the alpine area has the smallest number and variety of wildlife. Little creatures such as pikas, hoary marmots and golden-mantled ground squirrels, which can find shelter among the rocks, live here year-round. Rosy finches and pipits are often seen flitting about the barren slopes.
Of the larger mammals, grizzly bears, wolverines, bighorn sheep, mountain goats and mule deer range the high areas in summertime. Usually the goats are the only ones to brave the fierce winter weather and seek sustenance on windblown ridges, but wide-ranging wolverines may occasionally wander by the area.
Of course, variations in habitat occur in all three of the ecoregions. Individual ecological communities can range from dense forest to open grasslands, from arid slopes to marshes and riverbanks, from talus-covered mountainsides to fire-altered forests. Each mini-region has a unique community of plants and animals that are constantly changing. Keep your eyes open and listen carefully. You may observe something few visitors ever see.