Exploring The Kootenays

Part V

The Hoodoos

Often did we drive by the Hoodoos on our way north to Invermere this last year. I always marvel at their extraordinary formations and unique look. But not until I read an article in the Brithish Columbia Magazine this spring did it occur to me that one can actually hike the Hoodoos.

A few days after I read the article, I grabbed the boys and dogs and off we went to explore them.

The Hoodoos are just a bit south of Fairmont Hotsprings and easily accessible from the back via Westside Road.

From there a short trail leads up the very top of the Hoodoos. And up there you have a spectecular view over the Columbia Lake and the Purcell Mountains...

 

...and of course down the crevasses and stone sculptures of the Hoodoos themselves.

There are two explanation as to how the Hoodoos came to existence....

Geology explains the formation as deposited sediment from a glacial river at the end of the last ice age, which after a closer look sounds absolutely plausible.

As always, you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.

This sediment deposit is rather vulnerable to wind and rain. As explained in the magazine article, the rain washes the sediment down and wind blows sand up, this forms the unique appearance of the Hoodoos and explains the almost beach-like trail and area behind the top of the Hoodoos. 

Luckily the hoodoos are covered by a more weather resistant capstone layer, which is clear in the following image:

The local Ktunaxa people though have a different explanation in their creation story:

In the beginning of time when only animals lived on earth, a huge sea monster was eating many animals. The other animals decided that the monster, Yawu?nik, would have to be destroyed. As they finally succeeded in conquering Yawu?nik, his meat was given to the other animals, leaving only the inner organs and the bones.

The inner organs gave life to mankind and the scattered ribs form today's hoodoos. 

Easy to understand how this legend came to be.

At a certain time on a sunny day, in spring it is around noon, the sun bounces off the south facing cliffs and illuminates the north facing cliffs, which gives the Hoodoos an almost eerie glow.

Walking along the ridge for a kilometer or two will then reward you with a stunning view back to the Hoodoos with the Rocky Mountains as background

A magical place I sure will go back to many more times!

Sources:

British Columbia Magazine, Spring 2014 Edition, pg. 30

Ktunaxa Nation - Who We Are

April Conservation Tip

Spring Cleaning

It's that time of the year, the days get longer, the sun shines through the ever so dirty windows and everybody wants to get the "winter" dust out of the house.
Perfect time to share some DIY natural cleaners and housekeeping tricks with you!
I think I have never been a friend of that harsh chemical odor that one used to associate with house cleaning. But since we are living in a house with a private sewage system, I got really sensitive as to what is going down the drain.

My absolute favorite cleaner right now is a orange vanilla vinegar concoction. I actually found that recipe, believe it or not, in a book by Lisa Steele,  Fresh Eggs Daily, as a chicken coop disinfectant. 
As I did the spring cleaning in the chicken coop, I had made a batch and was so pleased by the cleaning power and smell that I wondered, if I could use it also as a shower cleaner. We have rather hard water and I usually attack the water stains with pure vinegar, but that just smells horrible.
And yes, the orange vinegar works wonderfully and the shower smells so good afterwards!

Orange Vinegar Cleaner

You need:

Peel of about 3 oranges

1 cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 vanilla beans, slit in half

white vinegar

1 one quart canning jar, or any other jar that holds about 1 liter

Spray bottle

Put the orange peel, vanilla bean and cinnamon stick in the jar and fill  up with vinegar. Screw on the lid and leave on your kitchen counter and shake every other day or so. In about two weeks, or earlier, the vinegar mix will turn orangy. Strain through a fine mesh and fill in a spray bottle.

Another great (smelling) bathroom cleaner, especially for bathtubs is even simpler:

Salt and Lemon Juice Bathtub Scrub

You need:

the juice of one or two lemons

salt

a stiff sponge

Sprinkle the salt  generously in the bathtub, soak the sponge with the lemon juice and scrub your bathtub. This will get rid of all the residues of a long cream bath and the rings around the drain. If you don't have a stiff sponge, just use the lemon halves. Instead of juicing the lemon gently squeeze the half while you are scrubbing with the salt.

Clogged drains...how I hate them. Vinegar to the rescue again!

Baking Soda Vinegar Drain "Unclogger"

You need:

1/2 cup baking soda

1/2 cup vinegar

hot or boiling water

Funnel the baking soda into your drain and carefully pour the vinegar down the drain right after the baking soda. Put on the drain plug to keep the action down below. After about 15 min follow up with a quart of boiling water (if you have metal pipes) or with water as hot as it comes out of your faucet (if you have plastic pipes). We had a very stubborn clogged drain, so I had to repeat this a couple of times, but eventually we won...;-)

Baking soda is also a great help if you accidentally burnt some food and have trouble to get the burnt stuff from the bottom of your pan. Sprinkle ample baking soda on the bottom of the pot or pan and fill with about 1 inch of water. Put it on the stove and let it gently cook. After a few minutes you will notice flakes of the burnt material floating in the cooking water. Let the pan cool down, wash it out and you have a clean pan again.

Finally the proud owner of a dishwasher I did quite some experimenting with dishwasher detergent. The mainstream stuff works great but I wasn't quite as happy about their environmental impact. I did not come up with a satisfying DIY detergent but settled with the ECOVER detergent and rinse, both work really well with our dishwasher. After a couple of washes though, probably due to our hard water, the glassware gets that whitish film. A cup with vinegar in the upper rack during a normal cycle took care of that.

Not really in the cleaning section but a good smelling tip against moths in your clothes....

...just put some dried lavender in your closet and they will stay away (and your clothes will smell lovely).

And to this effect

HAPPY SPRING!

Winter Wolves

 click on the images to enlarge them

Bitter cold wind and snow was howling around my makeshift home for the last three weeks, a small tent, here in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. I endured countless frostbites and suffered from coffee deprivation, all that to bring photos of these icons of the wild in winter to you!

Sounds good, ey? Fortunately, all of the above was not necessary to take these images. I did not have to spent three weeks out there in a tent, and I did have a good cup of coffee on the morning of the photo shoot...:-)

And yes, these are real wolves, and yes again, they are running free.

Thanks to the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre, all I had to do to take these photos was to book a photo walk with them. And have some luck with the weather, as we had a fabulous winter day for the shoot.

Shelley and Casey of the Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre do an amazing job education people about the nature of the wolf. It is hard, even in our seemingly sophisticated society, to break the old myth of the wolf as a heartless killing machine. Thanks to the Brothers Grimm, wolves still are feared.

Wolves also compete for the same prey as modern day hunters, which is almost more detrimental to their future than the century old fear of people.

The Centre is educating young and old about wolves and their place in a healthy eco-system by bringing the wolf close to the people.
And by giving people the opportunity to even walk with theses amazing animals they manage to raise the desperately needed awareness about the future of the wolf.

Ever since my first walk, I feel like an ambassador for the wolves and I bet many who did the walk, too, feel the same.

Not to mention the fun of being out in nature, with wolves, and a camera, or two...;-)

The wolves that accompanied us on this winter walk were Flora (last six images) and Scrappy Dave (first six images).

But wolves are in peril! If you like wolves and the images here, I urge you to scroll down to the March Conservation Tips and give your vote to help save the wolves from getting scratched from the endangered species list.

March Conservation Tip

Wolves in Peril!

...again and again...

Once almost extinct by humans, wolves had a bit of a comeback here in the Rocky Mountains. But now the US Congress has taken away their endangered species status and hence opened the doors for states like Idaho and Montana to once again kill them by the hundreds.
Right now, until March 27th, there is a world-wide petition going on, trying to convince the Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse this.
Please consider making your voice heard, too!
Just click the link below

NRDC Biogems Defenders

To find out more about the status of wolves in North-America and why they are so important to a healthy eco-system please check out this site:

Defenders of Wildlife - Wolf 101

Antarctica Flashback

It's already a year since I spent 6 weeks in Antarctica...time for a flashback!

This blog I would like to dedicate to one highly adapted bird, also the icon of Antarctica, the penguin.

Follow the Gentoo Penguin, Pygsocelis papua, as it masters mission impossible, raising young  on the White Continent.

At the beginning of the Antarctic summer, the Gentoos start building their nests or remodel older nests. They typically have their colonies near the shore line on snow free ground.

Most of the colonies though are on higher ground, to be safe from flooding.

If the way from the breeding ground to the open water is covered in snow, the penguins will create paths in the snow that they will use over and over again, so-called penguin highways, that make it easier to waddle up and down the slopes.

They nest in colonies ranging in size from only a few to thousands.

Pebbles play an important role for the Gentoos, they build their nests with them and seem to be very picky as for which pebble might be just the right one for a certain space. A male might even bring a especially nice pebble to a female to impress her...pebbles are a girls best friend...;-)
Even the youngsters can be seen playing with little rocks.
A Gentoo nest can contain as many as 1700 of these pebbles!
Although Gentoo Penguins reach maturity with the age of two, they usually start to reproduce around 3 to 4 years old. By that time a male looks for a good potential nest site and tries to attract a female. Once they find together, Gentoo Penguins tend to stay together for life.

Early in the Antarctic summer the female lays two eggs within three days. Both partners share the task of incubating the eggs for 35 days. Although both parents try hard, not all eggs get to hatch.

Some roll out of the nest, many get robbed and eaten by Skuas. One afternoon on Cuverville Island I was watching a incubating penguin being distracted by a neighborly dispute. A Skua spotted this instantanously, flew in with lightning speed and stole the egg. The parent realized what just happened and was most distraught and kept looking and calling for some time. Quite heartbreaking.

After the chicks hatch they stay in the nest under close supervision for about 3-4 weeks

And again both parents share the task of either defending the nest or finding food for the chicks and themselves
.

After this close nest period, the youngsters are huddled together in so called creches, a kind of Gentoo kindergarten, so that both parents can go and find food.

At around 70 days old, the little ones will fledge and explore their surroundings more and more.

During that time, until they finish their first molt from "baby" feathers to waterproof adult feathers and become independent, they will still call for their parents, each parent and chick is able to distinguish between it's parent/chick in between hundreds of other penguins, and

their parents will still come and feed them. The feeding of the young works via regurgitation...a rather noisy and a bit stinky business as I was lucky enough to observe closely. But also highly effective, nothing is wasted.

With about 100 days, the young Gentoo penguins reach their independence. Their molt will have completed and they are ready to go into the water and look after them self. However only 30% to 50% survive the first year. The Skuas are a serious threat for the eggs and the small chicks and once they are too big for the Skuas and ready to go into the water, seals, especially Leopard Seals, will wait for the inexperience youngsters.

Once the fledglings have made their final departure, the adults start their annual molt. For a good three weeks they seem to stoically endure the ordeal of a complete change of feathers. During this time they can't go into the ocean and hence they do not eat during that time.

Once the molt is completed though, life goes on as usual. The Gentoo Penguins breeding on the Antarctic Peninsula will seek out ice free regions farther north during the Antarctic winter months and return in spring to start all over....

February Conservation Tip

EASY TREATS FOR OUR
FEATHERED BACKYARD FRIENDS

Earlier this winter, when we had these bitterly cold temperatures and lots of snow, I went out one afternoon to feed the horses. Passing a nearby tree, all of a sudden a half dead bird, a Yellow-Shafted Flicker, fell out of the tree and right in front of me. That poor thing was just bone and feathers. We tried to bring it back to life but starvation had already taken it's toll.

Time to get active and feed our backyard friends I thought, but wasn't sure what they would need and like. So I called my very knowledgeable birder friend Judy for some advice. And went right to work...

It was such a great success, that I did this all winter long and just made a batch yesterday as our weather forecast calls for snowfall for the next couple of days.

And this is what Judy recommended:

You need only need a few things, pine cones, peanut butter, sunflower seeds and a strong string.

Secure the string, I used some ribbon, tightly at the thicker base of the pine cone and leave enough extra string to hang the cone later on.
Then thickly spread peanut butter on the pine cone. Please don't use peanut butter like Skippy or Jif, not only are they sugared and salted, which the birds for sure don't need, most of them also contain palm oil, which nobody should use! (please see "Palm Oil, a Pressing Matter" for more info)
Just get the natural, plain peanut butter with no additives.

After the pine cone is covered with peanut butter all around roll it in a bowl of sunflower seeds.

That's it. You are ready to hang the bird treats. This is so easy, it is probably also a great activity to do with kids!

All you have to do now is hanging them. I chose some trees where I had seen the birds hang out and which had branches low enough for me to reach but high enough off the ground so that the cats could not reach.

Just for the fun I made a few for my chickens, too. They loved it.....