shale of the century

Fi had researched the Yoho area before we arrived and realised it was the home to one of the most important fossil discoveries ever, the Burgess Shale. The mountains in the area are home to 515 million year old fossils once on the shallow tropical seabed and now pushed thousands of feet into the air when two continents collided  and produced the Rocky mountains.  We apprehensively booked ourselves on a guided trip wondering if we could manage the 22km round trip to visit the site and had to declare that we were fit enough and had no phobias for some reason!

The walk began at 7.15am, bit of a shock to the system, given the length of days as you can imagine we've not been getting up all that early recently!  We woke to the sound of pouring rain on the tent at 5am and thought oh well at least it will have cleared in an hour.  No such luck, when we emerged from the tent an hour and a half later there was a pond underneath it!  We had to forgoe breakfast due a series of incidents and having to dig a drainage channel to reclaim the land the tent should have been on.  We arrived for the walk hungry, wet and freezing cold.  The ranger's prediction was that it could rain for the next six hours of the ten hour walk and also warned us that when the rocks are wet it can be difficult to see any fossils but it was up to us, she was happy to go if we wanted to - though the fact that she kept repeating this phrase slightly suggested otherwise.  There was one other chap who turned up, he was wearing jeans and one of those festival ponchos - think bin bag but red and thinner.  She tactfully turned him away suggesting tomorrow may be better weather.  No one else who had booked on had turned up due to a rockslide which covered the trans Canada highway (equivalent of our M1)  round the corner, it was closed for the next 2 days so I guess we got away quite lightly with our floating tent.  We decided we should go for it- we later realised that each other thought the other one wanted to go so we ended up going by mistake really but it was mainly to avoid having to go back to the wet tent.

Anyway all turned out fine, it stopped raining and we warmed up as we started walking up the massively steep hillside.  We walked past fresh bear poo on the trail, up for a snack stop at LittleYoho lake and on until Claudia who was guiding us stopped and on our left just uphill from our trail were a group of mountain goats! This completely made our day as I had spent ages scanning the hillsides to this point in the hope of seeing a speck of a mountain goat and here they were having a sit down making the vertical rock look like Sofa World. One teenage male (we could tell this as any older males would be out on their own and they were too big to be this years) was sitting with his long bony legs tucked under him on a tiny rock ledge trying to look comfy then he got up, moved to a new rocky outcrop even lumpier than the last and set about getting his legs tucked in and ended up with some sticking out from under him but he pretended that he was really comfy and enjoying it.  There were two mums with little ones from this year, some teenage males and some older females, about 10 altogether.  This was really lucky to see, not many people get to see them this close up.  In the winter they grow fantastic white coats with cropped trousers and beards.

At lunchtime among the rocks we saw our favourite Pikas again and many ground squirrels and chipmunks.  Then the sun came out for the final zig zag uphill through the snow to the Wallcott quarry where Wallcott chipped away the hillside where there is a metre wide band of shale rich in fossils.  The story goes that he and his wife were horse riding up the Burgess pass, the same trail we had just walked which had been created by Canadian Pacific rail workers exploring the valleys adjacent to the newly emerging railroad that was making its way across the Rockies.  The horse kicked a rock which split revealing a fossil and Walcott an enthusiastic palaeontologist began searching the area and spent the rest of his life collecting fossils from this rich seam.  

The way up

half way at lake Yoho

Hobnail boot, possibly one of Walcott's

Mice tunnels that used to be under the snow

check out how much the mice poo (when they're under the snow)

Entering the fossil zone

Those white things are mountain goats, it was great to see them.

Fresh bear poo on the trail (we seem to have a lot of scatological photos!)

This is so cool, the Pikas cut up vegetation and put it in neat little piles to dry out so they can store them and eat them through the winter.

Nearly there, but it is difficult to see in the snow

Alpine hunk 

"I think its a rock" - Fi has had to wear this helmet at all times of the holiday just in case she hurt herself

Trilobite

Another trilobite - most of the other fossils were amazing but too small to photograph, hence the dearth of trilobites (trilobites were not the most common fossil at this site)

This is 2 pieces of the species below