Camping & Roadtrip Canada · 2025
Waterton Lakes National Park · Banff National Park · Icefields Parkway · Jasper National Park · Kootenay National Park · Yoho National Park
December 6, 2025
Bear Encounter in Canada: The Moment that was too close.
If I ever encounter a bear, it will be in the middle of a forest, with bear spray on my belt, and then I mustn't run, I always thought. For eight years, I have been spending several months a year in the Rocky Mountains, hiking hundreds of miles, camping in the backcountry, and absolutely no bears anywhere on the trail in all those years. Never. Not that I want to encounter one, because bear encounters are among the most dangerous and deadly hazards in the mountains of the US and Canada.
When I finally encounter a bear in Canada, nothing is as it should be. It's not in the middle of the forest, but on a road. I've just left my bear spray in my backpack in the car—and I'm running. And suddenly it's standing in front of me. Large, black, almost surrealistically fluffy. The fact that I can see its fur in detail definitely means that I'm too close. Much too close. And defenseless. An encounter that makes the blood in my head crystallize. A moment in which the seconds echo in my chest like a Chinese gong—slowly, loudly, and with the thought that this could be it. The end of my life.
November 19, 2025
Bam, Banff! Camping in Canada’s National Parks.
Tall, dark fir trees are rooted in soil which is covered with soft pine needles, and evening sunlight filters through the branches as a pine cone drops right next to me. Within seconds, the first squirrel is spotted. Our front yard has a squirrel! I'm so excited that, in an ADHD-like manner, I almost run back to our campsite with the empty water bottle in my hands instead of filling it up at the common washroom. We spend three weeks traveling with our tent and car in Canada's national parks – more specifically, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Canada's Rocky Mountains are different from those in the USA. Light gray, like overturned books, the mountains stand upright and abstract in a landscape so vast that you could shout “Hellooo!” and the echo would only come back in 20,000 years. Forests so huge that you forget there's anything else on the planet besides trees – and then, of course, bam, Banff! The first national park in Canadian history – and definitely not our last time there. How we hiked to ink pots and glaciers in Banff National Park, how reality caught up with us in Jasper National Park, and what exactly happened in between: hop in and come along!