u/JustAskingTA

Taken from behind the Supreme Court

Edit - Durrr... I mean West Block

I did Black Rock Mountain earlier this summer and I kept seeing something that made me wonder about the mountain's history. When you hike Black Rock, you go up a bunch of scree and crags and then get to a big, nearly-flat grassy plateau (Picture 4) before the last push up more scree to the summit. There used to be a fire lookout at the summit, built in 1928, but it was demolished a few years ago.

What caught my eye were the huge cairns / stone piles all over the plateau (Pictures 1-3). Normally I'd dismiss them as just trail markers, but a couple things didn't add up to me:

• You don't really need trail markers here - it's a nearly flat grassy plateau, with the trail up the peak in full view only a few hundred metres ahead. There's no secret crags or dangers, no trees blocking the view, just plateau.
• They didn't follow the path - some were on the trail, some were far from the trail, and some were clustered close together. They weren't laid out like trail markers would be.
• They're BIG - way bigger than a few stones a hiker would have piled to point the way. They would have taken considerable time and effort to make. Some don't even match the nearby stones' colour - they would have had to be carried from either further up or down the mountain.

So I did a bit of digging into the mountain's history, and I have two hypotheses:

1. The fire lookout's construction / supply

When the lookout was built in 1927-28, a lot of work went into establishing a trail so they could get pack horses up to supply the lookout. Alberta Forest History has some cool pictures of trail construction (Pictures 5-6) and if you've gone to the summit, there's a reason it feels like cut stone stairs in places near the very top - because they are! (Picture 7)

However, I'm not sure what the rock piles' connection would be to construction. Most of the blasting / cutting was further down the mountain from the plateau, and even for the work up at the summit, I can't see workers carefully carting down rock chunks to make piles (especially spread-out ones) instead of just adding them to the scree they're already standing on.

I thought they may be rocks for tents / campsites for the resupply horse packs, once the lookout was up and running, since it was a 3-day journey, but this article about the lookout seems to say that teams overnighted at the base of the mountain, then went up to the summit and back in one day - not overnighting on the plateau.

However according to the same article, they apparently DID hitch their horses on the plateau and take the supplies the last few 100ms in backpacks. So maybe the piles are from hitching horses? Like you'd pile up rocks on the reins to hold the horse in place? That doesn't sound exactly right, especially since the piles are spread all over the plateau and not just at the base of the summit, but I don't know horses, and it's one of the few mentions of use of the plateau that's plausible.

2. Stoney Nakoda traditional uses

The one is a bit more speculative, but I was reading Chief John Snow's These Mountains are Our Sacred Places - it was written in the 70s by the grandson of the Stoney chief who signed Treaty 7. Snow was old enough to partially remember and hear stories from his parents of the times before the First Nations were fully expelled from the mountains by the government in favour of the parks.

Snow doesn't get into details but talks about Stoney uses for the mountains - that people would climb up them as part of vision quests / spiritual journeys and spend several days up one while fasting and praying, purposefully going without water sometimes.

Black Rock isn't named by Snow, but the north border of the main Stoney reserve is right next to the mountain - it absolutely would have been well within traditional Stoney lands, especially since there are wide flats around the Ghost River at the base that have been historically used by the Stoney.

It's purely speculative, but I could see Black Rock's plateau as a pretty solid location for the types of vision quests Snow writes about, and if so, the cairns may have something to do with it - maybe camp sites, or physical labour to wear the body out (like the fasting), or just leaving ones mark. But I can't find enough information on Stoney vision quest practices or on their use of Black Rock Mountain itself.

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I feel like we know so little about the history of the mountains we all love, so much was lost or not written down. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas, or suggestions of resources or places to search for more information, or if they've seen similar out of place cairns on other mountains?

A heads up for hikers - I bought new Keen hiking boots in May. I've gone for maybe a dozen hikes in the 3 months I've had them and they're already coming apart - the treads are peeling off the sides on both shoes.

I've had Keen boots in the past and they lasted years of hard hiking. It's a shame because these are otherwise comfortable boots. I don't know if it's worth trying to glue them back on or just give up and try to return them and get a different brand.

Edit: MEC took them back and I exchanged them for a pair of Oboz that hit my requirements. Apparently this has happened before with Keens.

Coordinates: N 80° 0' 0.135'', W 86° 3' 56.029''

Link on Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/2Jjg7j37VQEfrDAEA

Found this poking around the Arctic on Maps and thought it was neat. At the UofT Scarborough campus in Toronto, there's a scale model of the solar system. The distance from the Sun out to Nepture is about the length of the campus, so you can easily walk to all the planets.

They then included Alpha Centauri, the next closest star to our own, on the same scale...

...which put it on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, near the North Pole, about 4000km away.

Wasootch Peak is short and steep - 860m elevation gain over 3.1km distance!

Gets scrambly up at the summit and some slogging through scree but the views of Kananaskis Valley were breathtaking! It was a great day to celebrate Canada!

First pic is the view of Mt. Kidd from Wasootch, the last pic is Wasootch Peak itself. The ski hill in the distance is Nakiska, used in the 1988 Olympics.

Coordinates: 51°44'29.4"N 112°57'31.9"W

Link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/STiKSz23b9TC7K757

The badlands in Alberta and Sask are pretty cool in person too - they're below the level of the flat open prairie around them, so you can only see fields until all of a sudden there's a valley with a river and trees and crazy geology carved out of the land in front of you.

The planes themselves aren't weird, but I love that the people at the Transportation Safety Board of Canada can't help themselves from taking some very scenic photos of accident investigations.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tsbcanada/

Edit - I forgot to post links to the flights themselves!

1. Private flight, Stave Lake BC, July 27 2020 Air transportation safety investigation A20P0071
2. Air Tindi, Diavik NWT, Dec 27 2023 Air transportation safety investigation A23W0158
3. Rocking Star Adventures, Haines Junction YT, June 10 2024 Air transportation safety investigation A24W0066
4. Air Tindi, Yellowknife NWT, Nov 20, 2014 Air transportation safety investigation A14W0181
5. Private flight, Jasper AB, July 21 2019 Air transportation safety investigation A19W0095
6. Sasair, Deer Lake NL, Aug 9 2024 Air transportation safety investigation A24A0054
7. Delta, Toronto ON, Feb 17, 2025 Air transportation safety investigation A25O0021
8. Private flight, Torquay SK, June 15 2014 Accident Cessna 172C Skyhawk C-GEJS, Sunday 15 June 2014
9. Bailey Helicopters, Terrace BC, June 1 2012 Air transportation safety investigation A12P0079
10. First Air, Resolute Bay NU, Aug 20, 2011 Air transportation safety investigation A11H0002
11. Kudlik Aviation, Rankin Inlet NU, May 7 2024 Air transportation safety investigation A24C0042
12. Flightpath Charter, Lake Simcoe ON, Dec 30 2019 Serious incident Embraer EMB-500 Phenom 100 C-GVJV, Monday 30 December 2019
13. Private flight, La Tuque QC, Sep 12 2021 Air transportation safety investigation A21Q0083

Coordinates: 66.10565903312114, -73.68729586775487

Link to location on maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/bdsdLhQ9sH4UFYJs7

What causes these cool little round lakes up on Baffin Island? Is it some kind of sinkhole or melted permafrost? There seem to be dried up ones too.

Image source