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s we round the corner, the
distant hum of 373-metre-
high Takakkaw Falls fades
behind a wall of grey rock,
polished smooth over eons by
shifting ice. All flora disappears
drastically here, where remnants
of ancient seabeds have been
thrust skyward by continental
plates, now sitting 2,000 metres
above sea level. The Emerald Gla-
cier presents itself in a moody
haze, with small rivulets of melt
water draining out of it. We’re on
the Iceline Trail, a 14.2-kilometre,
61 ⁄ 2 -hour classic march through
Yoho National Park that’s famed
for tracing the bleeding edge of
our planet’s last ice age, which
ended 11,700 years ago. Below us,
as though some titan carved a gi-
ant trench across the mountain
with a mythical hoe, a lush forest
of evergreen flows downslope
from the glacier’s old moraine.
It’s a landscape of stark contrasts,
dividing the barren alpine from
the thriving ecosystem it feeds
lower down.
The area, on the western side
of the Great Divide, is a living the-
sis on how some lines are natural
and some are made in the mind,
as the British Columbia-Alberta
border also flows through it.
While the Canadian Rockies are
most often associated with Alber-
ta, much of the mountain range
also lies inside B.C.
“I don’t think people realize
that Golden is so central to the
national parks,” hiking guide
Laura Crombeen tells me, refer-ring to the town of 3,700 on the
eastern edge of B.C., where she
bases her business, Self Propelled
Adventures. It is, in fact, where
we accessed this world-renowned
hike, taking only 45 minutes to
hit the trailhead – less time than
it would have from Banff.
“There’s really great hiking in
Golden, too,” Crombeen contin-
ues, her wiry frame darting for-
ward in practised bursts of fit-
ness. “I’ve got lots of different
hikes and options I can choose
from depending on my clients’
ability levels and what they want
to see for the day. It’s kind of a
hiker’s paradise.”
It was the proximity to trails
such as this one plus the raw
quality of the town that won
Crombeen over. Golden sits in the
middle of five national parks: Yo-
ho, Kootenay and Glacier, ex-
tending peripherally out to Banff
and Mount Revelstoke. Over the
past two decades, the former tim-
ber and rail town has slowly tran-
sitioned from a century-old re-
source extraction camp to a bona
fide adventure destination. While
most people know it mostly for
the winter bonanza that Kicking
Horse Mountain Resort offers,
many are also discovering it as a
down-to-earth summer alterna-
tive to the traditional access
points of some of the most classic
trails in North America. Not to
mention the lesser-known gems
outside the parks.
“You need to have a bit of a
spirit of adventure if you come toGolden,” says Dave Perez, owner-
operator of Explore Golden
Tours, as he leads me into the
backcountry west of the town on
a nondescript and empty dirt
road the next day. “We’re not de-
veloped yet. Our trailheads are
not well marked, things are har-
der to find. But on the other
hand, I think when people are
coming to the mountains for an
adventure, they’re not looking
for the paved road to the top of
the mountain.”
Putting technique into prac-
tice, my outing with Perez re-
quires an hour-long quad ride to
the trailhead. These machines are
forbidden in the parks, and while
this access is dubious, it also
makes it practically exclusive.
The scenery is on par with that of
Banff and Yoho, without a soul in
sight. Leaving the nimble four-
wheel-drive machines behind,
Perez leads me through scrubby
subalpine forest, then over a
boulder field with no marked
trail, into an alpine meadow with
a waterfall draining from its rim.
The peaks above are crumbly,
made of pink quartzite and shale.
They stand like castle turrets
guarding Gorman Lake, where a
canoe waits lonesome for pas-
sersby to cut the water with.
We’ve only been walking for an
hour, and could basically keep
going forever – south toward
Kicking Horse Mountain Resort,
or north toward Glacier National
Park.
“You’re not going to run intothe same numbers of people
here,” Perez says, sober about the
fact the town still has some
strides to make to embrace the
adventure industry in full.
He says it was about 10 years
after Kicking Horse came into
play, in 2000, before the town got
on the map. “And then people
started loving the fact we’re off
the beaten path,” he says. “And
the other thing that’s starting to
happen is Lake Louise is filling up
now. If you don’t get to there by 9
in the morning, you have to go to
overflow parking and take a bus.
And the next place is us – 45 min-
utes down the road, it’s Golden.”
Perhaps serving as de facto fil-
ter for those softer sightseers,
Golden is still surrounded by in-
dustry on all sides: trains, high-
ways and a mill. But at the
creamy centre of it all is a town
redefining itself with its blue-col-
lar charm, affordability and su-
preme access to some of the best
mountain wilderness in the
country. While the national parks
are world-class, so too is the quiet
draw of the Purcells, Selkirks and
western Rockies – three massiveranges that converge on this
town. They hold many of the
marquee peaks North America’s
founding mountaineers made
their names in. If there’s a theme
here, it’s finding a way, some-
thing Golden has been doing
since the 1800s.
With staple businesses such as
the mill and railrway still going
strong, and the odd bit of rough
pavement pervading, Golden is
staying true to its roots. While
restaurants such as Eleven22
have been offering contemporary
menus tuned into metropolitan
trends (that is, Asian-fusion) be-
fore the ski resort even opened,
other businesses, including the
Whitetooth Brewing Co., are find-
ing a growing market that in-
cludes loggers, adventurers and
tourists alike. Soon enough, a
chic housing development is
coming, too, with cafés and retail
spaces, along with a distillery
across the street.
The mountains and trails, of
course, have been here since the
start.SpecialtoTheGlobeandMailYohoNationalPark’sIcelineTrailin
B.C.overlooksalushforestof
evergreen,downslopefromthe
glacier’soldmoraine.TakakkawFalls,
below,isoneofthesitestoseeon
the14.2-kilometretrail.
PHOTOS BYMATT COTÉAroundthebend
ThoselookingtoenjoytheRockieswillberewardedinGolden,B.C.
AsMattCotéwrites,ithasallthebeautyofLakeLouisewithoutthecrowds