IF the Canadian national parks are too crowded for your tastes, you can get a sense of the country’s real wilderness in Tumbler Ridge. This remote area of the Rocky Mountains is home to footprints of dinosaurs left in the Late Cretaceous period almost 100 million years ago. At the time, the landscapes in the north-east of British Columbia were still swampy primeval forests. Today, the mountainous region is an insider tip for holidaymakers who want to see Canada’s wild side.
“The dinosaur tracks woke Tumbler Ridge from its beauty sleep,” says geologist Cameron Drever. When he shines a flashlight on a rock, the threetoed footprints are clearly recognisable. Drever works as a researcher in Tumbler Ridge and leads visitors to Flatbed Creek, near the place where local children first found traces of the dinosaurs. Since then, dozens more tracks of various dinosaur species have been discovered in the region. Because of its geological importance, the United Nations named Tumbler Ridge region as a Global Geopark, one of three in Canada and just 147 worldwide.
The park is the only place in the world where fossilised traces of Tyrannosaurus Rex consisting of more than one footprint have been found. But Tumbler Ridge is anything but overcrowded. While throngs of visitors crowd into national parks like Banff, Jasper or Yoho, and many campsites are fully booked for the entire summer, the Rocky Mountains around Tumbler Ridge are still comparatively deserted.
“We’ve got some of the most spectacular glaciers, mountain lakes, white water rivers and waterfalls in the Rockies here, but guaranteed without the crowds,” says Randy Gulick, who runs a tour company in town. Gulick stands on the banks of the Murray River and starts his high-speed boat. The engines howl and we’re ready to go to one of the most spectacular natural monuments in British Columbia.
Kinuseo Falls in Monkman Provincial Park is a few meters higher than Niagara Falls but is only seen by a few thousand visitors a year. The S-shaped rocks over the falls date from the Triassic epoch 250 million years ago, when the seabed rose near the supercontinent Pangea and formed the Rocky Mountains, which today extend from New Mexico in the southern United States to northern British Columbia.
The summit of Mount Hermann, at almost 1,700 metres, offers a stunning view of the northern Rocky Mountains. You can see expansive forest landscapes, lakes, snowfields and glaciers, occasionally also old mines. The slopes of Mount Babcock, an hour’s drive south of Tumbler Ridge, has some of the geopark’s most beautiful trails, totalling 300 kilometres through deserted wilderness.
The Boulder Garden has bizarre rock formations and battlements created during the formation of the Rocky Mountains. “Once upon a time, enormous primeval forces were at work here,” Drever says. Best time to visit: The summer season is short, from the end of June to beginning of September. Winters are very snowy. Getting there: The nearest airport is Fort St. John, 160 kilometres away, which you can reach by transferring via Vancouver or Calgary. – dpa
