On the south side of the Trans-Canada Highway rise Mount Stephen and Mount Burgess, and a few kilometres on, the road climbs towards Kicking Horse Pass, at about 1,627 metres the boundary between Alberta and British Columbia, and the line of the continental divide. The name came from an incident in 1858, when the explorer James Hector was kicked by his horse and left for dead.
The railway is the dominant story. When the Canadian Pacific line was built over the pass in the 1880s, the gradient was so steep that trains ran away on the descent, and in 1909 the company built two spiral tunnels, loops bored into the mountainsides, to ease the slope. Today you can stand at a viewing platform and watch a long freight train disappear into the rock and emerge higher up, passing over its own tail. Hundreds of metres of train, going around in circles, is a strange and satisfying sight.
Nature here is spectacular, and in one case it is unique. The Burgess Shale, on a ridge above Field, is a thin layer of rock that preserves the soft bodies of animals from the Cambrian period, around 508 million years ago, in extraordinary detail. It is part of the UNESCO listing for the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, and visits to the quarries are by guided hike only. Close to the road, Takakkaw Falls drops more than 250 metres, and Emerald Lake glows an impossible green from glacial flour in the water. Grizzly and black bears forage along the verges, and elk graze beside the railway.
For the rider, the Trans-Canada here is a mountain highway of long, smooth curves, with the Kicking Horse River in a canyon beside it, and traffic is steady with trucks and campers. Field has almost nothing in the way of services, so fill the tank at Lake Louise or at Golden, the nearest town of any size, about thirty-seven kilometres west. The best months are July to September, though snow can fall in any month at the pass, and mornings are cold even in summer. Bear spray is common sense on foot, and wildlife on the road is a real risk, so ride with care.