Mountain Lion Visits Camp | The Greatest Divide Trail

Section B is another brutal stretch of the GDT. We didn’t see anyone else hiking while we were out there. It was total peace and quiet....well, except for the disturbance in the night... 🦁 “Section B” FAQ: What are the stats? Distance: 120 miles / 193km Elevation Change: 14,000 gain / 14,000 loss Highest Point: Tornado Saddle Days: 7-8 days Where does it start and end? Section B starts in the town of Coleman Alberta and ends at the border of Peter Lougheed Provincial Park near the beautiful Kananaskis Lakes. It’s about a two hour drive from Banff/Canmore to get to the lakes. Lucky for us, after the section, we got a ride from the lake to the main highway, then paid some gas station employees to drive us to Canmore to spend the night! What were your favorite parts? We really enjoyed Tornado Saddle. The clouds were rolling in over the mountains as we made our way to the saddle and it felt very remote back there. We also enjoyed hiking across the tundra near Fording River Pass. Although this section had less “wow!” moments compared the upcoming sections in Banff and Kootenay, we liked Section B for the solitude and the massive rock walls the dominated the landscapes. Any wildlife? As with most of the GDT, we thought we would see more wildlife based on how remote Section B was, but we really only saw a handful of grouse in this section. A mountain lion started chirping at us while we were in our tent right before we fell asleep. Jarhead had actually just fallen asleep and I had to wake him up. We never got to see the mountain lion - it was too dark and we didn’t want to aggregate/entice it with our headlamps or anything like that. Anything else crazy happen? The night before climbing to Tornado Saddle there was a huge lightning storm without any thunder. It was very odd (and very quiet). Jarhead tried to film it around 2am, but he couldn't capture the light on our little camera. The sky continued to “flicker” for several hours. There were some wildfire reported soon thereafter, and we figured it was because of the “silent storm” that night.