Original subtitles

The world has an incredible variety of astonishing landscapes.

One of the most beautiful anywhere is the Canadian Rockies.

Canada's Rocky Mountains are a landscape of staggering proportions.

Immense ice fields.

extraordinary lakes.

And the Rockies are home to some of the most captivating wild creatures on the

planet.

Cougars are the African lions of North America.

They're very, very elusive and they're very tough to find.

The Rockies contain some of the world's most spectacular mountains.

We're here at one of my favorite geologic locations. One of the famous

structures that geologists know is all around the world.

The awesome power of this landscape has held deep spiritual meaning for

thousands of years.

They would use these areas as a vision quest.

They would write their story on the rock.

We're going to take you on a journey through the Canadian Rockies to admire

their wonders and discover their secrets.

The Canadian Rockies are the northern part of a great chain of mountains

over... 30 million years ago.

Astronauts on the International Space Station can sometimes see the whole

Rockies poking up above cloud level for thousands of miles along the western

side of the North American continent.

Our journey will take us through perhaps the most spectacular 1 ,000 -mile

stretch. of the entire Rockies.

It begins as mountains rise from the prairies, just where Canada

meets the United States.

The northern section of Waterton Lakes National Park sits on the Canadian side

of the border.

Sacred to the Blackfoot First Nation people, the deepest lakes descend

148 meters, almost too deep for any chink of light to penetrate.

On the Canadian side of the border, the rocks begin to change from

smooth and rounded towards more jagged forms.

Below the peak, its distinctive colour visible from space, is the Red Rock

Canyon.

Here, shady silk stones, called argolite, have been churned up over the

millennia from the depth of the Earth.

The red colour comes from oxidised iron.

From Waterton Lake, we're heading straight up the great imposing line of

Canadian Rockies.

165 miles further north, our destination is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,

Banff National Park.

Here you can find one of the great marvels of the Canadian Rockies, hidden

a vast expanse of trees.

March of Banff National Park is covered with dense subalpine forest.

An extraordinary array of wildlife has flourished in these forests.

Predators and their prey.

But finding the roaming animals of Banff is no easy feat.

Wildlife photographer John E. Marriott often sets out very early in the

the time when he has the best chance of striking it lucky.

This is what I call wolf o 'clock.

from before dawn until when sunrise really hit. And that's when wolves are

active.

I actually had a pretty cool encounter with the Bamptown wolf pack just

recently. And I actually ended up having the entire wolf pack of eight wolves

walk by me about 30 or 40 metres away from me.

and then bed down about 60 meters away from me.

They had no idea I was there.

The wolves in Banff live off the many elk found roaming the park.

Despite their incredible teamwork, only 10 % of the pack's hunting attempts will

lead to success.

But in contrast to their dubious reputation, wolves

are extremely wary of people.

As a wildlife photographer, I also find it fascinating how they are so

persecuted in North America and really around the world. And there's a real

hatred on them for killing livestock, for this thought that they endanger our

children and our pets and stuff. And really, it's all a myth. It's a

myth.

Whilst out looking for mumps elusive wolves, John's eagle eye spots the mark

another of the park's hard -to -find hunters.

Just going to check these tracks.

So I actually came over to check these tracks here, which now that I'm in

they're a bit older. But in coming over here, there are actually some cougar

tracks, or it looks like from yesterday.

This is the cougar track here, and if you look at my fist.

It's basically about the same size.

And the cougar tracks are coming all the way along the road here, which is

fairly unusual for a big cat.

So cougars are the mountain lions. They're basically the African lions of

America. And they're big, basically as long as a human is, then with another

three -foot tail, a meter -long tail.

And this looks like it's probably not a big male. It's probably either a younger

male or a female just from the size of the track.

And the cat probably walked on here.

Cougars have the largest range of any mammal living in the Americas.

They roam from the Canadian Arctic to the bottom of South America.

Unlike wolves, they are lone stealth hunters.

Stalking a deer for up to 50 minutes before choosing the perfect moment to

strike.

Cougars are very, very elusive and they're very tough to find.

I was fortunate earlier in the year to have a really glorious encounter with a

mother cougar and her kitten.

I got to sit and watch them interact and eat a deer.

And it was really an extraordinarily rare experience in the Canadian Rockies.

They're normally very, very tough to find. That was only the eighth and ninth

cougars I have ever seen in my entire life.

So this is it coming out, circling back and forth a bit.

But you can see a distinct cougar pattern here.

A little too old to follow, but still interesting.

upper reaches where the trees begin to thin out, and there is less protection

from the elements, different animals have made their home.

We have now moved up into the high elevation environs, and it's much

here. The snow is about three or four feet deep. It's about minus 15 degrees

Celsius with the wind chill.

And this is where we're off looking for lynx. No two hare, which is the white

rabbit that they feed on.

John identified signs that there might be lynx nearby.

See what they did. See if they got a kill.

The Canadian lynx feeds almost exclusively on the nocturnal snowshoe

for its extremely useful and very wide hind feet.

The snowshoe hare also changes its fur when winter arrives, turning bright

to conceal itself in the snow.

Lynx are extremely specialized to prey on the snowshoe hare. It's very fast,

lynx are faster and more agile.

So the lynx have these huge paws, just as big as a cougar's, even though it's

half the size.

And that's to enable it to walk on top of the snow and chase these snowshoe

hares down.

We had lynx tracks earlier on.

and now we've lost them and there's too much snow falling out of the trees and

it's covering up track.

What I'm doing right now from day to day, I just feel incredibly fortunate

this is the dream job.

It's just fantastic to be able to live in a place like this and go out and know

on any given day you could be hiking around and you might meet a grizzly bear

the trail.

Weighing up to 300 kilograms, and often over two meters from head to toe,

there are around 65 grizzly bears in Banff National Park.

On a few lucky occasions, John has managed to track them down.

A quarter of Banff National Park sits above the tree line, where it's too high

and cold to support forest.

It's up in these heights that the full grandeur of the Canadian Rockies is on

display.

As we journey north, we begin to encounter some of the Canadian Rockies'

spectacular peak, like the exquisite Mount Rundle.

Mount Rundle is perhaps the most frequently painted and photographed of

mountain in this range.

Its angle to the sun means it's covered in deep shadow in the morning, but

glows warm at sunset.

The giant wedge that forms Mount Rundle once sat deep in the Earth's crust

before it was thrust almost 3 ,000 meters into the sky.

Despite its scale, it's one of the easiest peaks in the range to conquer.

Mount Rundle sits on the rocky's eastern range.

To a geologist's eye, The Canadian Rockies consist of three distinct

Each has its own very different characteristics, despite following the

narrow course as they stretch northward.

For geologist Ava Engelman, the sheer variety of the three separate chains is

big part of the fascination of the Rockies.

The Rocky Mountains are composed of three ranges that run parallel, more or

north to south.

The easternmost is the front range.

And what is typical for the front range is that they have inclined layers, like

you see here on Mount Randall.

The main range is the layers are even thicker.

The cliffs are even taller than here, and they're mostly horizontal, or almost

horizontal.

The western ranges are looking entirely different.

They don't make deep cliffs.

The mountains are still very steep and pointy, but the layers there are much

thinner, and the rocks are much weaker and softer, so they crumbled up entirely

in tiny little holes.

Why is that three ranges?

The reason is that we are going deeper into that old ocean.

The three ranges were once different layers of rock on the floor of an

ocean.

Our next mountain holds clues as to how that ocean floor was thrust upwards

towards the sky.

Heading 15 miles east from Mount Rundle, we come to a peak

even more spectacular, Mount Yamnuska.

Sitting at the very edge of the Rockies, this is the very first great mountain

that comes into view as you approach from Canada's immense plains.

Mount Yamnuska rises to a height of 2 ,200 metres, with an almost vertical

cliff face forming its peak.

It can provide a test for every level of rock climber with over a hundred

different routes to the summit.

And Mount Januska is the ideal place to discover clues about the birth of the

Canadian Rockies many millions of years ago.

We're here at one of my favorite geologic locations in the Rockies. In

see on the right side, there are no mountains, and then comes a big rock

This is Mount Yamnuska. So we are at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains.

Mount Yamnuska's 300 -meter cliff face is extremely hard limestone formed

500 million years ago.

But its peak doesn't, as you might expect, sit on top of even older rocks.

Its geology is upside down.

The really cool part here is that if you look underneath the rock cliff, where

the slopey part is, this is where we have very young sediments.

Sandstones that were deposited about 80 million years ago.

And that is one of the famous structures.

that geologists know is all around the world. This is textbook geology here.

And that is the so -called McConnell thrust.

The McConnell thrust is a weak layer of shale within the sandstone rocks, which

allowed the hard old limestone to grind up above it.

Only two meters thick, crumbled up rocks, but it is...

A huge plane that stretches out for 480 kilometers up to the north and to the

south. And it marks the boundary of the Rocky Mountains.

Since the Rocky Mountains were thrust towards the sky 75 million years ago,

another great force has shaped these mountains.

Glaciation.

Two million years ago, the Earth dramatically cooled, causing the entire

Canadian Rockies to be covered in a thick layer of ice, with only the

peaks visible above the white.

When the glaciers began to retreat, these valleys were flooded with massive

amounts of meltwater.

when it eventually drained away, left behind bizarre formations known as

hoodoos.

The hoodoos we see here, these are these really young glacial deposits, and

they're very, very weak rocks. Some people wouldn't even call it rocks. And

get weathered away in these really weird shapes.

that forms these pillar -like or human -like shapes of ghosts.

Heading 50 miles north from Mount Yamnuska, we discover one of the most

incredible legacies of glaciers in the Rockies.

Its astonishing natural beauty has made it a destination for travelers for over

a century.

Lake Louise.

The pastel colours of the lake's water were one of the very first tourist

attractions in the Rocky Mountains, when the first chalet was built on its

shores in 1886.

The lake is only a mile long.

that plunges 70 metres deep.

This deep chasm was carved by the Victoria glacier that now sits at its

western end and which is also responsible for the rich turquoise

As the glacier gradually moves across the limestone mountain, it grinds the

into a superfine powder known as glacial flour.

This mountain debris floats, suspended in Lake Louisa's waters, distorting the

light to spectacular effect.

Our journey through the Canadian Rockies is taking us just outside the Banff

National Park to one of the Rockies' most beautiful waterways,

Kicking Horse River.

The Kicking Horse begins in a mountain lake before winding 60 kilometers

the mountains and dropping down the breathtaking 373 -meter

The river was named after an incident when a 19th century explorer and his

were both trying to scramble up the banks of the river.

The horse ended up kicking the explorer very hard in the chest.

And now the river is used for rafting.

Alongside the river is a mountain pass with an important historical role, also

the site of one of Canada's greatest engineering achievements.

The pass is called, unsurprisingly, Kicking Horse Pass.

Back in the second half of the 19th century, the western edge of the young

nation of Canada was rich with coal, copper, lead, zinc, and above all, gold.

But the Rockies made these riches inaccessible to the rest of the country.

The Great Canada Pacific Railway was planned to link the country together.

But the high ridges of the Rockies presented a formidable obstacle.

Engineers believed they'd found a direct way through at Kicking Horse Path.

The track was built, but with a steep gradient of 4 .5%.

The first train to attempt the route derailed, and landed in the river,

three people.

A solution was needed and work began on an extraordinary project, carving

tunnels in a spiral into the mountains.

Two spiral tunnels were bored out of solid rock, increasing the journey down

mountainside by over a mile.

These subterranean constructions reduce the incline of the rails from a

dangerous 4 .5 % to a just about acceptable 2 .2%.

It has resulted in the extraordinary sight of the same train seemingly moving

in multiple directions just 15 meters apart.

Spiral tunnels help make the route connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic.

A success.

Helping to bond together the Canadian nation we know today.

But mountains have been much more than just a difficult place to cross.

Long before European settlers even arrived in Canada, the mountains had a

special meaning to the people who had long lived in this landscape.

Indigenous peoples have lived in this region for 10 ,000 years.

When European settlers came,

First Nation peoples lost their territory.

through their descendants we can still understand something of what this great

landscape once meant.

Tim Patterson's ancestors belonged to a First Nation people whose name, the

Inconclutnuk, means people of the canyon.

I'm originally from British Columbia. I'm Inconclutnuk.

And I've been out here for about 25 years now. I just can't seem to get over

mountains.

This is traditional territory to a number of indigenous groups here in

Alberta and eastern British Columbia.

Start with the Tenoho and then moved in the Nitsitapi or the Blackfoot.

And then after that, a number of different groups came through, the Dene

Sotena, and then the Stony Nakota.

Indigenous people lived mainly down in the prairies where hunting was good, but

came to the mountains for many food sources.

It's well known certain peoples are, you know, lived off the buffalo or lived

off salmon. And that's true.

But the mountains, apart from being awe -inspiring just in terms of their power,

they were extremely diverse as they are today in biodiversity.

And so we would move up into the mountains and my people, where I'm from,

go. and harvest roots like the yellow avalanche lily and still eat

it the way we used to eat it.

It's a plant that is an annual alpine flowering plant that

comes out just as the snow moves off the land.

Some things like the spruce tree here, some people still use spruce needles to

make tea.

And most of our diet came from these things.

If we just lived on buffalo or just lived on fish, we would be pretty

The mountains took on a great spiritual significance.

These slopes became a place of pilgrimage for First Nation people.

Grado Canyon, where we are right now.

as well as other canyons in the eastern slopes.

They would use these areas for fasting, what a lot of people would identify

as a vision quest.

But they would also, after that fast, they would write

their story on the rock.

But they would also use pictographs and rock writings as the protection.

So they would write on the entryway to those places to protect them.

The steep walls of Grotto Canyon are covered in rock art thought to date back

least 1 ,300 years, depicting key stories about the landscape and its

mythical creator, Napi, that were passed down the generations.

These would be like transformers. They would be in the mystical time prior to,

you know, what we see today and what we understand.

And they were part of the people that developed this world, right? This would

have been a larger set of writings and a panel.

There's some over here.

This looks like Napi holding a hoop.

And they would have a hoop and arrow game that they'd play.

And that's linked to the stories, eh? Way back when Napi fought the

mountain spirit.

It's a Blackfoot tradition that the mountains don't belong to anybody. And

was because of that story.

And so Napi, who's a mythical feature in the history and creation of the

Blackfoot people, he moved throughout the country teaching the people how to

hunt and how to harvest and where to go and where not to go, who should and who

should not be in the mountains.

It can be a fairly formidable place.

Tracking the long line of the Rockies further to the north, the landscape

changes.

As we approach a place that connects us 11 ,000 years back to the last Ice Age,

when this whole region was covered in ice, the Columbia Icefield.

The Columbia Icefield stands out from space.

as a vista of white punctuated with the shapes of glacial valleys.

Formed 200 ,000 years ago, the Columbia Icefield is a natural wonder.

Sitting 3 ,000 meters above sea level, it covers over 70 square miles.

Though it has receded in recent times, It's still in many places well over a

hundred meters deep.

It not only feeds six major glaciers,

it

feeds rivers that flow into all three of the oceans that surround Canada.

The meltwater of the Columbia Ice Sheet hasn't just produced some of Canada's

greatest rivers.

It's also carved the country's longest cave system, which extends for an

incredible 24 kilometers.

To get inside, you must first squeeze yourself through a very tight 30 -meter

passage.

Explorers captured a rare glimpse of Castleguard Cave when they managed to

its hidden depths on an expedition in 2013.

One of the few times this subterranean world has ever been recorded

on film.

The cave system was sculpted over millennia by the torrential forces of

meltwater during warmer periods between ice ages.

The explorers.

spent four days underground in a world without light, exploring many miles

of passages.

They found extraordinary mineral deposits that look like they're from an

planet.

Their vivid white color comes from calcite, dissolved from the surrounding

limestone rock.

The explorers also found rare cube -shaped cave pearls formed from minerals

slowly crystallizing around a single grain of sand.

They also discovered a unique blind shrimp -like creature found nowhere

on the planet.

It's extraordinary proof how life can find a way, even in the most extreme

circumstances, in passages that stretch away many miles from sunlight.

Our journey up the Canadian Rockies will now take us two -thirds of the way

towards their northern tip, to a mountain pass with an extraordinary

Athabasca Pass.

Before the railways, Athabasca Pass was a vital route across this section of the

Rockies for European settlers and traders.

These spectacular mountains, with some of the rocky's very highest peaks, were

dauntingly hard for traders to cross.

The effort to master these mountains was driven by the value of Canada's most

iconic creature, the beaver.

The North American beaver was once found across the entire continent, from

Canada's Arctic tundra to the deserts of Mexico.

These highly industrious animals have had a profound impact on the Rockies'

landscape, constructing extensive dams from felled trees,

the longest ever, measuring 850 meters in length.

They helped slow down river courses, and create vast wetlands.

The beavers go to incredible lengths to build these deep ponds, hoping to keep

themselves safe from potential predators.

With the knock -on effect of helping create a vital habitat for other

to thrive, from fish to insects and wildflowers.

But the arrival of Europeans on Canada's east coast in the 16th century spelt

doom for many of North America's 60 million beavers.

The fashion for beaver felt hats was driving a huge demand for their fur.

At the height of the trade during the 17th and 18th centuries, about 200 ,000

furs was sent to Europe every single year.

The forefathers of Joe Urie were Métis people, a group with a unique heritage

who had a pivotal role within this burgeoning trade.

That is a beaver lodge, the home of the beaver. That's what it was all about.

And the reason for coming for our beaver was the beaver over in Europe had been

depleted. They were almost extinct.

And there was a cache of them over here, the likes of which was never seen in

Europe.

The fur trade was extremely lucrative.

But before the pelts could be sent at a huge profit to Europe, traders had to

get them across the Rockies.

Things worked their way across the country in kind of stages in this sort

relay manner, being transferred by different men of the trade, a lot of

Métis.

And ultimately, it's the culmination of a long line of Métis people who lived

and worked along this river.

The origin of the Métis people is that of unions between two very, very

distinctly different cultures. You had European men who'd signed on with the

trade, generally of French, English, or Scottish descent, coming over here, and

it became sort of customary for them, some of them, to take on what were

country brides, where they married into indigenous families. And sometimes this

was just done to sort of secure trade in a particular area with a particular

people. But ultimately, their children, and their children's children developed

this new culture, this mixed culture, and Métis means mixed.

The Métis' First Nation heritage gave them excellent knowledge of the

and they possessed the toughness needed to conquer the Rockies.

And at the crucial Athabasca Pass, the Métis people became indispensable to

European traders.

We've made the Athabasca Pass.

That's it back there.

It served as the through route over and into the Columbia District for the

better part of five decades. Once you get up and over the other side of the

divide, you'll come down, and it was a 2 ,000 -kilometre paddle to the Pacific.

As Métis people, we're a very hardy and sturdy group of people. They play a

pivotal role in getting things up and over the path in both directions.

What is it like to cross that path?

Well, it's about 50 kilometres to the height of it and a gain of almost 1 ,000

metres. What you need to bring up and over the path and into the Athabasca is

those fur bales. The average bale weighed about 90 pounds.

The average...

A Métis man working the trade would carry two of them. That's 180 pounds.

What's significant was the way that they did carry them.

This is a true sash in the true length of it, and this would create a tump line

which wrapped around the forehead and around the bottom of those bales so that

you could keep your hands free. Now consider that.

You're going up 50K, up 1 ,000 meters, and you've got 180 pounds

strapped to your head.

Once the fur trade through the Rockies began to dwindle due to changing

fashions, seven Métis families decided to remain living near the Athabasca

close to the modern town of Jasper.

And this is the final resting place of Suzanne Caraconti Moberly.

He met a gentleman by the name of Henry John Moberly, who was a white fellow

from Ontario.

Now, if we're going to be here in this place and speak to them and their story,

I think it's appropriate that we're just going to put a pinch of tobacco down,

just as sort of an offering.

Suzanne and her family were some of the first people ever to settle, summer and

winter. in this harsh Rocky Mountain environment.

Well, this is the homestead of one of the Macy families that lived in the

valley. This one in particular belonged to Yvonne and Madeline Moberly, Yvonne

being the son of Suzanne.

And, of course, there are ten children.

They survived sort of subsistently.

They were hunters.

They were trappers. But they also cultivated the area, so they did farm.

did grow hay and whatnot to feed their livestock.

Many Métis, along with other indigenous groups, were removed from the land they

called home.

and face persecution in Canada for many years.

A scarring history which is only now being acknowledged.

As we move towards the very northern tip of the Canadian Rockies, our final

destination is the pinnacle of this continent's splitting range.

Mount Robson.

This hulking massif rises 4 ,000 meters into the sky.

Its towering peak catches any passing weather system, covering the mountain in

snow, and creating the spectacular glacier sliding

down its north face.

First Nation people call it the Mountain of the Spiral Road,

as the visible rock layers seemingly invite a winding

path to the top.

But this giant is arguably the hardest peak in the entire Rockies to climb.

The steep sedimentary cliff faces and the upper sections completely encased in

ice and snow make it a grueling ascent.

Most climbers have to turn back before they reach the summit.

Those that make it are rewarded with extraordinary views of a world of

grandeur.

The Canadian Rockies have now taken us north for a thousand miles.

Through breathtaking peaks, lakes, rivers, and ice.

Without doubt, one of the world's most beautiful landscapes.