
Great Divide’s Spring Newsletter, 2025
Happy Spring, everyone. It’s hard to believe we’re 25 years into the new millennium. Or that Great Divide Nature Interpretation is coming up on its 29th year of operation!
My snowshoeing season wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, and this past weekend, I saw my first prairie crocuses, a sure sign of spring. My summer guiding season begins in late May, and I can’t wait to see many more wildflowers and other scenic wonders out on the trail.
Bow Valley Parkway Cycling is Back!

A family ride.
This week, Parks Canada announced that the pilot project to allow spring and fall cycling on the Bow Valley Parkway has been extended. And not just for this year, but for the next five!
From May 1 to June 25, 2025, and again from August 28 to October 2, 2025, the eastern 17 km section of the Bow Valley Parkway will be closed to cars.
If you’re self-propelled on two wheels, you can enjoy a gorgeous and scenic riding experience without vehicle traffic. It’s a terrific opportunity for families, for nature lovers, and for scenery junkies.
The park is making a few requests of people: there’s no parking on the TransCanada Highway, so please ride your bike from Banff’s Train Station parking lot; carry bear spray, as well as lots of water & food; and remember that in the spring, the road is only open for biking from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. because of the Park’s Canada’s seasonal restriction to support wildlife.
Enjoy the ride.
Logging in Lake Louise
From December until the end of March, Parks Canada logged a portion of the forest just west of town.

Logging west of Lake Louise
What?
If you’re thinking, “wait a minute, I thought national parks don’t allow logging!” you’re mostly right, but this logging is different. It has created the first half of the brand new Lake Louise Community Fireguard. A fireguard is a large area that’s been cleared of trees. It’s meant to act as a barrier to wildfires by eliminating fuel.
This winter’s work cleared out over 70 hectares (170 acres) of forest, running from the Chateau Lake Louise to the highway. Next winter, 95 hectares (235 acres) will be logged from the highway to the base of the Lake Louise Ski Resort.
All this should reduce the risk of future wildfires to the community of Lake Louise, which is good news given the destructive power of fires these days. The catastrophic fires in Jasper in July, 2024, and in Los Angeles in January, 2025, have made everyone here more concerned.

Lake Louise Community Fireguard
On a happier note, the newly deforested landscapes will also improve wildlife corridors and create some good foraging habitat away from the busier parts of town.
Next winter, the entire area will be re-opened, and we’ll be able to snowshoe into the fireguard. Should be exciting to see it firsthand.
Karsten Heuer, 1968 – 2024
When I first started working in Banff National Park, in the 1990s, there was a young biologist hanging around, getting his feet wet. His name was Karsten. I didn’t know then what an amazing life he would lead (I don’t think Karsten knew, either), but when he decided to travel – self-propelled – from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in 1998, everybody took notice.

Karsten Heuer working in Banff’s backcountry
The “Yellowstone to Yukon” conservation project had just been launched, with the goal of protecting the core of the Rockies with an expanded network of parks, easements, conservancies, and land management rules. Karsten thought it would be good to put a human face atop this idea, so in 1998 he set off on foot to travel. I remember him camping out at our apartment as he hiked through Lake Louise. It took him a year and a half, mostly in that summer and the next, but he did it, travelling the entire 3,400 km distance under his own steam. Afterwards, he often talked of how there were only a couple of dozen days where he didn’t see a grizzly bear or some sign of grizzly bears. His incredible trip put a human face on the project, but also convinced many how great an idea “Y2Y” was.
That was just the beginning for Karsten. In 2003, he and his wife Leanne Allison travelled with the Porcupine caribou herd to highlight their migratory route. A few years later, with their young son Zev along, Karsten and Leanne paddled across Canada by canoe. And for his final professional achievement, Karsten was the manager of the bison reintroduction project in Banff National Park starting in 2017. From a founding population of 16, bison in the park now number over 130.
Karsten was diagnosed with a rare neurodegenerative disease two years ago, and died in November, 2024.
So long to a father, husband, biologist, conservationist and adventurer.
Amazing Photo Exhibit at the Columbia Icefield Centre.
This winter, the Whyte Museum mounted an exhibit of photographs by mountaineer Jim Elzinga and filmmaker Roger Vernon. The images were huge and striking, which was only fitting, as they were all taken at the Columbia Icefield. Jim has been going there on mountaineering trips for 50 years, and loves the place so much he started Guardians of the Ice to help protect it.

Light and crevasses at the Columbia Icefield. Photo by Jim Elzinga.
2025 is the United Nations’ “International Year of Glacier’s Preservation.” It’s meant to highlight the importance of glaciers, and the risks we all face if glacial ice disappears. And the research is clear: glacial ice is disappearing. In an article published in the top journal Nature in February this year, glaciologists calculated the total ice loss between 2000 and 2023. It was 5% worldwide, and in western Canada, it was over 20%.
Around the world, 2 billion people rely on glaciers for their downstream needs: for drinking water, irrigation, and hydro power. Here in Alberta, our rivers rise along the Continental Divide, and snake their way through cities and farmland, helping to feed us and quench our thirst.
Jim Elzinga’s photos will have a new home next month, at the Columbia Icefield Centre’s main exhibit hall. They are so dramatic that Jim and Roger hope they will inspire people to want to safeguard our ice. If you’re on your way from Banff to Jasper, stop in and check them out. And once you do, lets get to work on the climate change file!

Valley of the Ten Peaks
Join Joel for a Nature Show this Summer at Moraine Lake or Bow Lake.

Joel at work on the shore of Lake Louise
If you’re lucky enough to stay at the Moraine Lake Lodge this summer, I’ll be back for another season of entertaining and intriguing presentations about the nature and the history of the Canadian Rockies. I’m there three nights a week.
And new this year, on Thursday afternoons, I’ll be presenting at the freshly restored Lodge at Bow Lake.
I look forward to seeing you at a show or on the trail.
Happy hiking!
-Joel