Burgess Shale

Today we visited one of the foremost fossil sites in the world - the Burgess Shale. There are three guided tours that you can do of this extensive site - Mount Stephen, the Walcott Quarry or the Stanley Glacier. We chose to visit the Stanley Glacier, which has fewer fossils than the other parts of the site, but is less steep. It has rained more than usual this year so the other tours have sometimes been abandoned after people have fallen on the way to the fossils.

Shortly into the walk, we crossed the second bridge, and saw the Burgess Shale layers far up the cliff. It’s the layers touched by the top of the last tree on the left and the side branch of the tree on the right - the layers look darker than the bigger layers surrounding them.

When we were close enough we saw the glacier and the waterfall (it freezes in winter and people do ice climbing here). We were going to the big rock in the centre of the field of rocks.

The day was lovely - sunny and warm, but not hot, and we spread out to look among the rocks that had fallen down, eat our lunch and enjoy the site. 

We found these fossils amongst the rocks. The fossils themselves are black.

Were shown reproductions of some other fossils found in the Burgess Shale 

And had a visitor.

We went to the visitors centre, where we saw more fossils 

And a pretty bird 

As we went along the Icefields Parkway, we stopped at the double spiral, where two loops have been carved into the mountains to allow trains to climb up. We were fortunate that a train was in the nearer spiral at the time. You can see the back section entering the upper part of the loop tunnel, while the front is coming out at the bottom.

After we were back, I took this picture from where we’re staying.