Oldman Watershed Council (OWC)

The described cross-country ski trip into the headwaters of the Oldman Watershed took place during late March of 2014. 

The calendar said it was spring, but sub-freezing weather and falling snow painted a different picture. 

My wife (Monica) and I shouldered packs, slipped into our skis and set out for Deadman Pass in deep snow—I've never seen the Allison Creek snowpack deeper. We took turns breaking trail.

The route wound through a dense forest of spire-like subalpine firs, trees that, throughout their range, set the foreground stage for some of North America's grandest vistas. And here on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies, this same vision—of Wow!—rings true.

Standing like snow-clad exclamation points, these majestic firs, with incredible symmetry, command the upper Allison Creek valley. And the forest glades, framed by these divinely fragrant conifers, offer breathtaking, world-class views: Window Mountain (a "window" through the crest of the High Rock Range); eagle nests on the cliffs of Tecumseh Mountain; and … grandest of all, the sublime and quintessential form of Crowsnest Mountain and the Seven Sisters, an internationally revered power peak that's surrounded by ancient vision quest sites. 

The entire Crowsnest River valley, formerly known as the Middle Fork of the Old Man River, is home to the greatest concentration of prehistoric archaeological sites in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Buffalo jumps, chert quarries and fishing camps are components of a colorful portrait of human occupation that dates thousands of years into the past.

Our cross-country ski trek took far longer than usual due to the bounty of fresh—soft-as-a-feather—snow. More dramatic was the depth of the base—hard and compressed, it was waist-deep at our valley-bottom starting point. 

The prescribed course, a clockwise oval roughly 20 km in length, takes us to Deadman Pass, then returns to our starting point via a parallel trail. 

We skied north, ascending the eastern flanks of Tecumseh Mountain. The forest, dark and silent, was our only companion … until the gentle tapping of a woodpecker entered the scene adding a faint, arhythmic pulse. And then a gray jay, like an apparition, flew in front of us, landed on a dead branch … and vanished. The bird's fleeting presence—and sudden absence—seemed surreal. It was as if we had been touched by a feathered ghost.

The snow, deep and silent, covered the land, blanketed the landscape and concealed many of its inhabitants. There were tracks left by red squirrels, snowshoe hares, weasels and martens, but the world beneath our skis was hidden. I thought of ground squirrels and grizzly bears nestled in winter dens, animals that would soon appear to pursue spring's emerging bounty. 

As we approached the descent toward Deadman Pass, the narrow trail brought us to the fresh tracks of a big male cougar, a cat we followed for more than a mile. The cougar had dropped some hairy calling cards and, interestingly, engaged in a series of short, off-trail meanders in order to mark trailside conifers.

At the bottom of one downhill run my skis punched into the base layer of compressed snow as I, still going forward, crashed on the snow's surface. I was floundering and stuck, with my skis jammed under me … until Monica came to my rescue and, ultimately, pulled me out of the trap of hard-packed snow. 

Late in the day as we circled back toward our starting point, we stopped at a spectacularly beautiful array of springs. During summer, they're adorned with yellow monkey-flowers and surrounded by Calypso orchids. Winter transforms these flowing ribbons of water into long, inky-black fingers imprinted into a deep and immaculate white carpet. The springs' multiple sources—the fingers—converge within a stone's throw from their origin and unite in downstream flow.

Trout swim here, and wintering ducks can often be seen as well, far from any other open water. It's a magical, otherworldly place. Occasionally kingfishers and snipe frequent the springs during the heart of winter. 

The springs flow year-round, and I've never seen them frozen, even when frigid Arctic air grips the land. Once, on a similar cross-country ski trip, I arrived and, after looking at the dancing enchantment of flowing water, glanced up to discover I was being watched by a great gray owl, a bird that, like the encountered jay, was almost too silent to be real.

We saw no owls during our cross-country tour, but did see a large and diagnostic excavation on the lower trunk of a spruce tree near the springs that, coupled with wood chips on the fresh snow, revealed a pileated woodpecker had been on the scene earlier in the day.

The Allison Creek valley is an Alberta treasure. It's one of many places in the headwaters of the Oldman Watershed that, while battered and bruised from landscape abuses, still holds a wealth of intrinsic beauty and ecological virtue. 

It screams for honest protection.

Hidden wealth on the headwaters landscape:

The Allison Creek valley, sandwiched between iconic Crowsnest Mountain and the High Rock Range, is an aesthetic and ecological gem in the extreme upper reaches of the Crowsnest River. This headwaters landscape hugs the continental divide along the AB/BC border and forms the western edge of the Oldman Watershed. 

Deadman Pass—it's on the AB/BC border in the extreme northern reaches of Allison Creek—is the third-lowest through-the-Rockies pass between New Mexico and Jasper National Park, and it's one of the three lowest trans-Rocky Mountain passes within a landscape that allows this relatively "low elevation" to translate into cross-border (AB/BC) migration of rare plants and animals from the forests of southeastern BC. 

Crowsnest Pass (1358 m) is the lowest of these passes, followed by Tent Mountain Pass, then Deadman Pass. All three offer connectivity between the headwaters of the Crowsnest River and the Elk River valley (commonly referred to as Elk Valley) to the west.

These low mountain passes, aided by the prevailing westerlies, serve as a west-to-east conduit for plant migration. The three passes—they are all much lower than those to the "near" north and south—may even enable rubber boas and western painted turtles to cross the Rockies in quest of new territory.

The awe-inspiring Allison Creek valley is home to Alberta's greatest concentration of western redcedars—the easternmost in Canada—and other extremely-rare-in-Alberta tree species (including Rocky Mountain junipers, ponderosa pines and western white pines). It's also home to endangered limber and whitebark pines, two tree species that, ironically, are far more abundant here, and elsewhere in Alberta, than a handful of tree species that don't appear on the provincial radar and receive no protection.

The forest within this headwaters landscape is Alberta's rarest, most species diverse, most threatened forest community—it's a priceless, one-of-a-kind treasure.

This forest, unrecognized and unparalleled, is unprotected. A recent logging operation killed one-half of Alberta's entire known population of western white pines. 

The valley is also home to other rare flora, including what is likely to be this province's greatest concentration of a scarce orchid, the large and spectacularly showy mountain lady's-slipper. Dirt bikers, during recent years, have excavated the core of this orchid's habitat, and created a deep trench that runs up an avalanche chute on the eastern flanks of Tecumseh Mountain.  

Roughly 10,000 years ago Crowsnest Pass formed the eastern edge of a large lake that filled the present-day Elk River valley. An ice dam near Elko, BC created the lake and, because the dam was higher than Crowsnest Pass, caused the lake to drain into Alberta. The resultant eastward-flowing river created the most likely scenario for the over-the-mountains arrival of bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout from southeastern BC. 

Picture this: trout swimming east over the Rocky Mountains … arriving to populate streams in southwestern Alberta.

Bull trout spawned in Allison Creek for 10,000 years. Now, they're gone. Here, on what may have been the trout's greatest stronghold, this threatened species didn't survive the abuses of the past century. Today, bull trout cling to just 30 percent of their former Alberta range.

The headwaters of Allison Creek is, however, still home to pure-strain westslope cutthroat trout, another threatened species. These cutthroats—until recently thought to have been extirpated—were not realized to still exist in the stream until active timber harvests resumed (starting in 2008) in the watershed. 

Timber harvests have continued during subsequent years.

Alberta's native cutthroats live on just five percent of their historic range, and it's unknown if Allison Creek's isolated population will survive. Roads and logging appear to be the species' biggest threats to existence. 

The killer: sediment that "chokes" out life in the stream bed.

Planning a trip:

Cross-country ski trips to Deadman Pass are best if planned during mid-week, following new snowfall. There are two reasons. Fresh snow serves to cushion the often brutal impact associated with skiing on hard and violently undulating snowmobile trails. Weekdays also minimize the chance that snowmobile traffic will be present.

Much of the traversed route is within the Allison-Chinook Cross-country Ski Area, where snowmobiles are not allowed. The trail to Deadman Pass, however, extends northward beyond the ski area in its traverse of the eastern flanks of Tecumseh Mountain, which forms the western border of the Allison Creek valley.

Another cross-country option is to ski from Alberta, via Deadman Pass, to the Highway 3 weigh scales in nearby BC. The BC segment of this route follows the Alexander Creek valley from Deadman Pass to Highway 3, and it, like a portion of the route in Alberta, is accessible to snowmobilers. 

You'll need two vehicles to complete this route. Park the second one in BC, then ski to it from the Allison Creek Brood Trout Station, in Alberta.