On the ranch road.





Nothing but work, this week.

But if you have to work, it would be hard to find a more scenic spot to do it.

We were out at the historic Ya Ha Tinda ranch on the boundary of Banff National Park, and west of Sundre, Alberta.













The ranch is operated by Parks Canada.

As described on the Parks Canada website:

The Ya Ha Tinda covers 3,945 hectares, running 27 km along the north bank of the Red Deer River. Approximately one third of the ranch area is natural grassland and two thirds is mixed forest. This productive montane area has an abundance of wildlife including grizzly bear, wolf, cougar, moose, deer, and bighorn sheep. Today the area is a major winter range for elk, with about 1,000 elk wintering in the area.

The Ya Ha Tinda is private property owned and managed by Parks Canada. It is not a National Park. This ranch is the only federally operated working horse ranch in Canada. Horses are wintered and trained here to be used as working horses for patrolling and protecting Canada’s Western National Parks. As an active working ranch, staff regularly use tractors, trucks, quads and other equipment on the property.

The ranch has a long and varied history:

In the early 1900's the Brewster Brothers Transfer Company obtained a grazing lease in the area. By 1908 they were raising and breaking horses here for their guiding and outfitting business. Horses were wintered in the area and trailed to Banff and Lake Louise for the summer.

The Ya Ha Tinda ranch area was formerly within the boundaries of Rocky Mountains National Park. The boundary changed a number of times before the present day Banff National Park Boundary was established. In 1917, National Parks took over the area as a winter range, breeding and training facility for park horses.

Regular staff at the ranch were short-handed, so a bunch of us went out there last week to assist with some big jobs.

Large numbers of elk winter on the ranch, and increasingly, spend much of the summer there as well. Research is ongoing, which requires that elk be trapped on occasion to be radio collared and studied. One of our jobs was to move a large elk trapping complex about a mile up the valley to a more suitable location. Much of the trap can be taken apart, but a large portion was moved in a single piece, requiring some heavy equipment and expertise.

All went well with the move - that is until a freak gust of wind caught us all by surprise, and blew several sections of 10' high fence down on us.


So the following day in dust storm conditions rivalling those of the dirty thirties, we put in posts for a new riding arena - right where the end of the rainbow appears in the picture that I 'borrowed' from the Parks web site.

It was far too dirty to risk a camera during the fence building process. Any of us could have started a garden with the dirt in our ears, and noses, and ...



As well as home to hundreds of horses and elk, the ranch also supports a population of bighorn sheep - who obviously like to visit with the horses as they take turns at the salt block in the main yard.
















































































Location of the ranch headquarters, for your Google Earth exploration is
51.753671 -115.58273

Google Earth screen shot - looking west into Banff National Park.