Snowshoeing with Kids in Banff: Lake Minnewanka

One of the great things about snowshoeing with kids is that you can do it just about anywhere there's snow. You don't have organize an official trip like the kids snowshoe expedition I lead at Hogarth Lakes. I leave our snowshoes in my rooftop Yakima cargo box just in case.

Following the signal to our buried "victim".

On this particular trip, we'd headed off to Banff with no particular plans. At one point, we found ourselves in the parking lot at Lake Minnewanka. What to do? Snowshoe!

Digging the "victim" out.

Letting the boys lead, we found ourselves heading through the trees behind the closed food services building and soon popped out at the picnic area. After a half hour of playing around, I pulled out a couple avalanche transceivers, which were in my pack from a snowshoe trip into avi terrain the weekend before (sans kids that day). Taking turns, one of the boys would bury my old analog transceiver and the other would have to find it with my newer digital model. Not only was this a blast--we didn't just go snowshoeing, we went treasure hunting--it was also a great way to introduce the boys to avalanche safety. When you play in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, with its often unpredictable and treacherous snow pack, you can never start them too young.

While not every parent has an avalanche transceiver, let alone two, you could easily do this with a group. All you need is a couple parents who have transceivers, and you've got yourself a winter treasure hunt. Transceivers are deliberately easy to use, and any kid old enough to read numbers can follow the signal to find the buried victim.

Wondering how to get started? Read these posts:

Kids Snowshoeing Gear: Picking out Kids Snowshoes

Wondering where else to go snowshoeing with kids? Read these posts:

Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: River View Trail
Snowshoeing with Kids in Banff: Lake Minnewanka
Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: Hogarth Lakes
Heli-snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis
Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: Canyon Creek
Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: West Bragg Creek 

Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: Hogarth Lakes

When I take kids hiking or kids snowshoeing, the goal usually isn't to reach the end of the trail. It's to have fun. Luckily the Canadian Rockies are full of places to have fun in summer and winter. Kananaskis and Banff have a wealth of hiking and snowshoeing trails that are perfect for kids. One of those places is Hogarth Lakes in Kananaskis.

Starting at the Burstall day use area, we followed the trail a hundred meters or so and turned right at the sign marking the Hogarth Lakes snowshoe trail. This took 20 minutes, as the kids repeatedly dove off the trail and down the short, steep and deep hill to the left. There was at least a meter of snow, deeper than most of them had ever seen. Eventually we were able to coax them away from their snowy frolick and onto the main trail...where they proceeded to jump off the snowshoe tracks and into the even deeper snow.

I'd had hopes of making it all the way around the flat 5 km loop that winds past Mud Lake and the two or three ponds that make up Hogarth Lakes. Maybe even leave the trail, head north through a very low pass, and check out the Burstall Lakes and an avalanche impact pool I'd snowshoed to a couple years before. However, I quickly gave up these hopes when I saw how much fun the kids were having rolling in the snow and climbing snow banks beside the trail and sliding down them.

After a couple hours we'd probably covered a kilometer, and the kids were soaked with snow down the back of their coats and in their boots. It may have been the fact that their wet clothes were slowly freezing or it may have been the promise of ice cream (I find that ice cream is a better post-snowshoe bribe than hot chocolate; go figure), but the snowshoe back only took half an hour.

For the more adventurous, the Burstall day use area can be the starting point for a wide variety of fun. Turning left where we'd turned right onto the snowshoe trail leads to Burstall Lakes and Burstall Pass (avalanche terrain; don't take kids beyond the avalanche transceiver practice area). Taking another left off the main trail to Burstall Lakes leads to the next valley over, where you can find some good bushwhacking (again, this eventually leads to avalanche terrain, so don't take kids there unless you're experienced and can recognize where to stop).

Distance: About 5 km for the full loop
Elevation gain: pretty flat
Snowshoeing/Exploring Time: 2 to 5 hours
Directions: West on the Trans-Canada to Highway 40. Follow the 40 south to Kananaskis Lakes Trail and turn right. In a couple of kilometers, turn right on the Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail. In 22 kilometers turn left into the Burstall day use area. The drive south from Canmore is shorter distance-wise but takes longer because the road isn't paved

Click here for a driving map.

Wondering how to get started? Read these posts:

Kids Snowshoeing Gear: Picking out Kids Snowshoes

Wondering where to go snowshoeing with kids? Read these posts:

Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: River View Trail
Snowshoeing with Kids in Banff: Lake Minnewanka
Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: West Bragg Creek
Heli-snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis
Snowshoeing with Kids in Kananaskis: Canyon Creek

One kid and one parent on the trail, two kids in the snow.

Caving with Kids in Hawaii: Kula Kai Caverns

Look closely and you can see the paws of Bert the Caving Canine

A giant room in Kula Kai Caverns

For the adventurous parent, finding non-beach activities you can do with kids while vacationing in hot spots can be a problem. Which isn't to say that I don't like beach activities. A couple days ago we got back from the Big Island of Hawaii sporting tans and swim suits that needed the sand washed out of them. We spent entire days in the hotel pools and the beach, went snorkeling and SNUBA (yes, SNUBA) diving, saw a couple humpback whales from the snorkel boat, and even spotted baby dolphins jumping out of the ocean while we took off our mask and snorkels. Any day you see baby dolphins jumping is a good day.

But going to the top of 4,200 m/13,800 ft Mauna Kea to take in what's reported to be the world's best star gazing? Nope. They don't allow kids under 14 to the top due to the altitude. Ocean kayaking? My 8-year-old was too young. Then I came across a brochure for the Kula Kai Caverns, which allows 8-year-olds on their 2-hour lava tube tour.

Descending deeper into the lava tube

Located on private land a 2-hour drive south of our hotel on the Kohala Coast, I booked the tour on our last day on the island. Our flight didn't leave until 7:30 p.m. and we needed something to do. We arrived half an hour early, and expected wait until our tour started. Instead, we were welcomed into the thatch-covered yurt for an orientation of the lava tubes we'd be exploring and fitting of helmets, gloves and knee pads. Then the three of us, Michael (8), Mack (12) and myself were led outside and down into the best tour on the island. Led by Rick and Rose, a husband and wife team of spelunkers that have spent the last two years mapping the caverns, the tour was an authentic, non-touristy trek into a 30-mile network of lava tubes below Mauna Loa.

As an outdoor experience, the caving felt more like a trip you'd find posted on the calendar of the Calgary Outdoor Recreation Association. Rick and Rose are clearly passionate about the lava tubes they've mapped and documented, and shared its geologic and archeological history with us in terms an 8-year-old could understand. They showed us stone rings used to hold water-collecting gourds before Captain Cook landed on the island, along with the remnants of torches ancient Hawaiians used to light their way through the tubes. We sat in giant underground rooms formed by flowing lava, turned off our head lamps, and sat in total, complete darkness.

For over two hours, all three of us were completely engaged. A month earlier I had actually watched a volcano erupt in the distance from just below the summit of Ecuador's 5,700 m Antisana, and here I was totally in awe of what I was experiencing under a volcano in Hawaii. I was expecting something like our hikes in the mountains, when I get to re-experience their mystery and beauty through 8- and 12-year-old eyes. Instead, I got to share a totally new experience with those eyes. And if walking under an active volcano with kids doesn't bring out the inner kid in you, I don't know what will.

For more info, go to: www.kulakaicaverns.com

Crawling through a tight squeeze in the Kula Kai Caverns

The lava tube entrance Mack (front), Michael (middle), Rick (behind)

Exiting the lava tubes

Hiking with Kids in Kananaskis: Pocaterra Cirque

Pocaterra Cirque

There we were, Mack, Michael and myself, a stone's throw from five big horn sheep. All I could think was, "Wow, that beats the larches turning gold any day." 

 Click here for more kids hikes in Banff, Kananaskis, Kootenay and other areas of the Canadian Rockies. 

Golden larch needles

Bighorn sheep out people watching

A week earlier I'd hiked Pocaterra Ridge to see the larches turning gold. Starting from the Highwood Pass day use area in Kananaskis (the highest point of the highest regularly maintained highway in Canada), the larches at Pocaterra are arguably better than in the more popular Larch Valley and the crowds are unarguably thinner. Pocaterra Ridge is also a great hike in its own right, which is something I wouldn't say about Larch Valley. Maybe I've passed through it too many times on the way to Sentinel Pass, Temple Mountain and Eiffel Peak, but the interminable, viewless switchbacks up to Larch Valley aren't my idea of fun. On the way to the ridge we passed by Pocaterra Cirque and I thought it'd make the perfect kids hike: larches for the parents and rocks and stuff for the kids to climb on. (Tryst Lake is another kids' hike that has larches, but not as many as Pocaterra Cirque.)

The trail veers off of the interpretive trail shortly after leaving the parking lot. (A couple weeks earlier instead of veering left we'd gone straight on the kid's hike to Ptarmigan Cirque.) After gaining about 60 m, it drops out of the trees into a lush meadow with Grizzly Ridge to the left, views of the Highwood Valley to the right, and golden larches straight ahead. After passing a very small lake, the trail re-enters the trees and gains another hundred meters or so. Three kilometers from the parking lot the trail splits with Pocaterra Ridge to the right and Grizzly Col to the left. We went left for a few minutes, dropped our packs and had lunch.

We explored, climbed on rocks and made another bigfoot video for an hour, then headed back. It was then that we encountered the bighorn sheep. They were about 10 m off the trail, and didn't seem bothered in the least by us. Although the boys had seen bighorn sheep up close through the car window, it was the first time they'd seen them on the trail. It was also the first time I've seen them that close on the trail. I've seen them from a distance--just the week before we'd seen a few from the ridge, grazing a couple hundred meters below us--but I've never walked right past them. It was one of those shared experiences with Mack and Michael that I`ll remember for the rest of my life.

Another reason I'll remember Pocaterra Cirque is for something Mack said. At the bottom of a steep section where the trail was hard packed dirt and offered little traction, he told me: "Dad, I didn't have any trouble coming down that. All this hiking must be working." Forget the bighorn sheep and the larches. That's what hiking with kids is all about.

Distance: About 6 km return
Elevation gain: About 150 meters
Hiking/Exploring Time: 3 to 5 hour
Directions: Head west on the Trans-Canada. Take the turnoff for Kananaskis Country/Highway 40. Drive south for about 67 km to Highwood Pass parking lot. Head down the trail for a minute or two until you come to an unmaintained trail on the left. Take it.

Click here for a driving map.

Pocaterra Ridge in the background

The trail to Pocaterra Cirque below Grizzly Ridge

We keep running into bigfoot...

Hiking with Kids in Kananaskis: Ptarmigan Cirque

Ptarmigan Cirque

Exploring the creek through Ptarmigan Cirque

They were everywhere. Clams in the meadow. Coral in the scree.

How the kids found all the fossils I'm still not sure. On our last kids hike to Ptarmigan Cirque in Kananaskis, one of the kids found a coral fossil in the rubble heap at the end of the meadow, but I had no idea there were so many. And they were everywhere on this hike. Mack found a big rock sunk into the soft moss of the meadow that had perfectly preserved clams. Michael went looking for marmots in the scree on the south side of the meadow, and came back with pockets full of rocks embedded with the outlines of corals. Soon, all the kids were looking for fossils.

Click here for more kids hikes in Banff, Kananaskis, Kootenay and other areas of the Canadian Rockies.

The meadow below Ptarmigan Cirque

Ptarmigan Cirque is my favorite easy kids hike in Kananaskis. It has enough elevation gain to challenge the kids, and rewards them with a broad meadow, a lazy creek to explore, scree to scramble on, and pikas and marmots to chase. There's even a grizzly that frequents the area, but on weekends there are enough people on the trail to reduce the risk of stumbling across it (reduce, not eliminate; I always start my kid's hikes with a brief lesson on what to do if they see a bear). Now, I can add fossils to the list of things I like about it.

This summer I've definitely learned more about the mountains by watching Mack and Michael than they've learned from watching me. As I've mentioned in previous posts, one of the most important lessons has been to tear my eyes away from the big, majestic views in front of me and look--really look--at the ground under my feet. Ever since our fossil hunting expedition on Burns Ridge in the spring, they've been finding clam and coral fossils on almost every hike we've been on. Here I was thinking I'd stumbled on something rare when I noticed the fossils on a scramble up Burns Ridge, and in reality I've been walking over fossils without even seeing them for years.

This year we stopped at the meadow instead of continuing up the valley to the true cirque beyond the rubble heap. The wind was howling over Highwood Pass and it was just too cold to linger very long. (That was early September and it felt like winter was coming to the high country, yet the next week I was sweating in short pants and a t-shirt across the highway on Pocaterra Ridge.) Next year if the weather cooperates we'll make it further, maybe even to Rae Pass just beyond the cirque and around the corner.

Distance: About 3.6 km return
Elevation gain: 230 meters
Hiking/Exploring Time: 3 to 5 hour
Directions: Head west on the Trans-Canada. Take the turnoff for Kananaskis Country/Highway 40. Drive south for about 67 km to Highwood Pass parking lot. Follow the signs to the Ptarmigan Cirque trail across the highway.

Click here for a driving map.