A word about bears
From Welcome to the Roberts Stalker in Jasper National Park, Canada on Oct 05 '06
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What I didn't quite grasp is in the wilderness much of Canada is, there's bloody loads of it, everywhere. That and that folk in the east speak french and insist on french road signs. There's swathes of trees tha just go on forever - they've had a valient attempt at chopping them down and even setting fire to them, but the pesky varmints just keep growing back. Just thought I'd glide into the topic of bears via trees as I forgot to mention it with the Banff entry.
Basically, the ganrly old warden at the Banff tourist office read me the riot act on bears and other assorted critters when I went in to ask about a nice walk in the woods. No such thing exists he told me with a certain amount of glee. Around every corner you're likely to stumble on a right bug hairy monster of an animal, which, if you startle, will bite your head off. I took him at his word as he was old which was a good thing as he'd obviously made it this far. He then proceeded to test me with leading/trick questions (grrr). "What do you do when you meet a blind bend in the trial and you're on your own?" he asked. Dumbfounded, and knowing whatever I said would be wrong, I suggested shout. "Ah-ha! Wrong! No, you stop then you shout or make noise to let whatever is out of sight know you're on your way".
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Twat.
So (and I think just for sport), this old fella convinced me to walk up this very steep mountain trail clapping to myself at every second step. He even suggested I have a practice run in town. Bollocks. If I wanted to forwarn the easily startled and prone to violence I would have stayed in Bedford. Anyway, I think he had a secret deal with the bears. It wasn't a warning but just a heads up to the bears to say that one with a complete set of hands is coming round the bend. "Mmmm" says Winnie (girls name) the Shit, "I like to dip those bits in my jar of hunny".
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Maybe the cure of bear VD involves dipping something else in honey - or maybe that was how it all started. You can Insert your own joke about bears getting the clap. However, looks like I've also bagsied the word 'Insert'.
Not much to say about Jasper, used it as an end point at the end of the icefields Parkway (very picturesque) and start point of marathon 11 hour bus journey onto Vancouver. I heard it was supposed to be one of the most amazing drives going. It was dark for half of it and before that there was mostly trees. How about that, the story went full circle.
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