Climbing Tunnel Mountain in Banff, Alberta
Before I travelled to Banff, Alberta in March of 2016, I had never climbed a mountain. I had always wanted to, but there were always two problems: I had no experience or training for climbing a mountain, and no real mountains existed in Southern Ontario. When I decided to visit my friend out in Banff, I knew that, among the drinking, snowboarding and wildlife watching, I needed to hike up at least one mountain.Tunnel Mountain, as I would find out, is what most people recommend for your first hike up a mountain in Banff. It stands at about 5,551 feet, its base is almost right downtown Banff, and its trail is a fairly simple jig saw trail that is etched into the side of the mountain. The hike didn’t seem like the most daunting challenge in the world, but, coming from an area where the highest peak is a 750 foot high escarpment, there seemed to be a level of preparedness and awareness required to reach the peak. So, on my first night in Banff, my friend and I decided we’d hike to the peak the next day.During dinner that night at Nourish Bistro, we ate with an old high school friend who had moved there a few years beforehand. She told us about her first experience hiking up a mountain. She said it was one of the most incredible experiences she had ever had, but she also said she experienced altitude sickness a lot more than she expected. Altitude sickness? I had completely forgotten that that was a possibility. How many people experienced altitude sickness? Would I be better off because I lived an active life already? I contemplated/worried about this, as I ate my dinner and drank some beer. I actually tried to limit my alcohol intake that night so that I wouldn’t be that hungover in case altitude sickness hit me. Trying to limit your alcohol intake in Banff, let alone on your first night in Banff, is not easy.We got up the next day slightly (or slightly more than slightly) hungover, ate breakfast, grabbed a few cans of Grizzly Paw beers and rented some metal spikes for our boots. I would highly recommend the spikes for any hike where there’s potential for ice. They cost around $5 to rent for the day, they strap to any boots in about a minute, and they made the day not only more fun, but also actually possible, as I would not have been able to walk up some of the icy sections in the boots I was wearing.We found the trailhead on the north side of St. Julien Road. There were more people climbing up than I expected for such a strenuous endeavour, but we only ran into people every once in a while on the way up. As I mentioned earlier, the trail jig saws across the mountain face, so, for the most part, a lot of the climb is only on a moderate slope. Without the metal spikes on our boots, however, some of the moderate slopes (that overlook the thousands of feet below you) become pretty dangerous and terrifying when they’re covered in ice.When we were about a quarter of the way up the mountain, we stopped, grabbed some water out of our backpacks and gazed through the dense trees covering the mountain. A deer grazed a hundred or so feet down. Another deer chewed on grass beside him. They weren’t grizzly bears or mountain lions, but it was still pretty cool to see deer living and eating on the side of a steep slope.
As we climbed further up the mountain, the moderate slopes started to get steeper and steeper. My heart started to race. My body started to feel fatigued. I wouldn’t call it altitude sickness, but my body was definitely having a harder time hiking and climbing as the air got thinner and thinner towards the top. Because of this, we started stopping for breaks more frequently, which was actually beneficial because the views of Banff, the neighbouring mountains and the valleys that poked through the trees were incredible. We started to see how small Banff really is in comparison to the endless valleys of mountains the run behind it and all around it.
My favorite viewpoint is right near the top. It looks over the back side of the mountain onto an open clearing. Rivers wind across the clearing, a row of large mountains stand behind them and clouds hover above their peaks. There’s a metal railing for you to hold onto to reach the viewpoint, as the best lookout point is down a little hill. This hill was very slippery in the winter and, when the drop beneath the railing is the height of a mountain, you’ll want to be careful (rent the metal spikes for your boots!).Once we reached the top, we found two red Muskoka chairs. We were not aware of this at the time, but they are a part of a Roots campaign called #Sharethechair where the company places two red Muskoka Chairs in iconic and beautiful Canadian places so that people can take photos with them and share them on Instagram and Twitter.
We sat in the chairs, cracked open the beers we brought, and looked down at the town of Banff and the never ending mountains beyond it.For more content like this, follow me