We hiked Wood Bison Trail in Elk Island National Park. This trail is located on the south side of highway 16 across from the park gates. You are still in the park but you don’t need to go through the gates to get to this trail. Not as many people go to this trail. It’s one of the harder trails in the park but well worth the hike. There are Wood Bison on this end of the park. They are smaller but there are more of them. Your chance of seeing them on this hike is much greater. And we did. Not close but they were there.
The trail is less traveled and as a result more enjoyable to walk. In my opinion anyway. The trees are tall and very close in on the trail. It’s a beautiful walk in some really nice tall Aspen groves.
There are lots of hills which add to the difficulty of this trail but it’s not really all that hard. The scenery is well worth the hike. After waking in the bush for 6 or 7 km you come out into a clearing with a stream running through it. There’s a nicely constructed wide bridge over the stream. You can stop on either side for a rest and have a snack. Plenty of room to spread out a blanket and relax. It was here that we saw the Bison in the distance. They were about 1 km from us but we still had a nice view of the herd.
The trail from here went through some plains hills with sparse vegetation for a while then back into the bush for the last 2km or so. I was focused on video for the last half of the trail and didn’t take any photos. Sadly. But our YouTube video has lots of great views. During the video, we also try out the Sawyer Squeeze water filter we bought. It worked really well for drinking water straight from the stream we had a snack beside. That’s going to be a lifesaver on our multi-day backpacking trips next year.
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