Cypress Hills:
Sitting Bull and the Gap Road to Alberta
Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park is the
first and only inter-provincial park in
Canada.
The park gets its name from lodgepole pines,
which are unique to the area and were mistaken for jack pine, or
"cyprès", by early French explorers. A
provincial park spanning 182 km2 was established on the
Saskatchewan side in 1931. The Alberta side (204 km2) wasn't
formally established until 1951, though funds for it were set aside by
1924. The park hosts more than 750 species of
plants, including 13 varieties of orchid of which eight are listed as
rare. There are also 230 kinds of birds.
Cypress Hills has 17 campgrounds in all. Two
sections are in Saskatchewan and there's a third in Alberta. Hardy souls
can drive over the border through the camp itself, which is much easier
said than done, and better done with a pickup or 4x4. Otherwise, drivers
risk damaging their cars.
The main Saskatchewan section has
everything: mini-golf, tennis courts, horseback riding, a hotel, boat
rentals, you name it. It’s huge. To have a choice of electrical or
non-electrical campsites, it's best to book ahead. Otherwise, to power
such items as laptops or camera battery charges, inverters can come in
handy; but they won't work on small appliances.
The many birds in
the park will wake up campers early in the morning, so earplugs are
a camping essential. In the heart of summer, sunrise is around
4:30 a.m. while sunset is after 10 p.m. There’s a scenic lookout
nearby called Bald Butte. Checkout is at 2 p.m.
The lookout point is very high above sea level
and worth getting to. The highest point in Cypress Hills is 60 feet higher
than the city of Banff.
After Bald Butte, campers can head to
Fort Walsh on the West Saskatchewan side of the park. This is where the
Mounties mediated between Sitting Bull and the American government. It’s a
national historic site.
To drive to the Fort on the Gap Road, which is also part
of the Trans-Canada Trail, is a challenge in itself. The road has
plenty of big round rocks and potholes and, as a result, is bad enough
that drivers have to go around 20 km an hour. It can take up to an
hour and a half to get to Fort Walsh this way. However, the reward is a
series of switchbacks featuring hairpin turns at angles much less than 90
degrees.
As it is, it's easy to almost hit a cow or bull,
since they're not used to a lot of traffic. There are cow crossing signs
here in addition to the usual deer ones.
Fort
Walsh is an eye-opening experience. Sitting Bull went there for
mediation, and the Sioux tried to find refuge in Canada here.
The Mounties themselves were founded after the Cypress Hills massacre in
1873, right in the Fort area, when a group of Assiniboine (Nakota) were
murdered over a dispute concerning stolen horses. It turns out the people
killed had nothing to do with the theft. The massacre spawned the creation
of the Northwest Mounted Police, which became the RCMP we know
today.
One part of the tour is great for the kids: the guides get
them all to dress up as Mountie recruits and go through a little drill,
then they enact a courthouse session with cue cards for people picked from
the audience. Offenses include horse theft, public fighting and whiskey
smuggling. Fort Walsh was dry, or at least officially. The park also has a
camp for kids where they live the whole Mountie and frontier
experience.
After Fort Walsh, the road to Alberta is still
difficult on the Gap Road, but very scenic. There is an
absolutely breathtaking lookout point near the park.
On the
Alberta side there's camping in Elkwater, a pretty town right in the
middle of the park which has a beautiful lake. The stars seem bigger than
anywhere else, shining in varying degrees of brightness. Cypress
Hills has been declared a “Dark Sky Preserve” by the Royal Astronomical Society of
Canada in partnership with both provincial governments. The reason for the
designation is to fend off light pollution. There doesn't seem to be any,
so the preserve is working.
photos
Back
to drapetology index
Back to home
page