The Canadian Rocky's are angular with sharp features and enormous
precipices carved long ago by glaciers.
They give the mountains in Banff and Jasper National Parks a rugged,
scenic beauty. Glaciers are still at
work in some areas today. Rivers of ice,
slowly grinding through layers of rock.
The melted ice contains what they call “Rock Flour”, finely ground rock
which causes the streams and lakes carrying this newly created water to have a
green, turquoise blue, or whitish color, depending on the density.
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| Lake Louise |
Lake Louise is an internationally recognized destination in
Banff National Park. We spent our night at
Lake Louise in the “Hard-sided Campground.” They also have a campground for “soft-sided”
tents, and RVs that have canvas components, surrounded by an electric fence to
keep out the bears - Grizzley Bears.
While we were told that female Grizzley’s and their cubs wander through
our “hard sided” campground, we didn’t see any.
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| Lake Louise in the morning |
Lake Louise is a lovely sub-alpine lake with unusually
bright blue water. The sides of the
mountains rise right out of the water.
It was crowded with tourists of every nationality when we visited on our
first afternoon. We hate being in
crowds, but we enjoyed the international flavor of the crowd.
The town of Lake Louise is so crowded that they have an
elaborate shuttle system to ferry visitors around. There just aren’t enough parking spaces for
everyone. We had been told that if we wanted
to be assured a parking space by Lake Louise, we need to arrive before 7
AM. They weren’t kidding. When we returned at 7:15 the next morning, we
nabbed the very last spot. We enjoyed
the hike/walk to the end of the lake and back.
Schooner even got to wade in the lake.
After our refreshing walk, we had breakfast, packed up and
hit the Icefields Parkway that connects Banff and Jasper National Parks. The Icefields Parkway is 144 miles long and
is one of the most scenic drives we have been on. It has many trail heads to hike back into the
mountains, and pull-offs to use to enjoy the beautiful vistas. There are one or two places to stay along the
way, a few more campgrounds, and one gas station. Otherwise, it is just miles and miles of
beautiful views.
The Icefields Parkway showcases the icefields and glaciers in
the two parks. About half-way along the
Parkway is the Icefields Centre. Here
you can take a special bus out on to the Athabasca Glacier. RVs can boondock camp (camp without
electricity or water) for a nominal fee in the Centre parking lot overnight. So, we spent the night overlooking a series
of glaciers. It was beautiful. I got up in the middle of the night and sat
in wonder, watching the glaciers by the light of the moon.
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| Boarding the special bus out on the glacier |
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| The dark grey is the lateral moraine pushed up by the glacier |
The Icefields tour starts in the Icefields Centre where you
get on a bus that takes you to the glacier transition point. From there you board special buses designed
to safely traverse the uneven icy terrain without damaging it. They have huge tires to protect the ice, and
extra low gears for descending or climbing the very steep (30% grade) lateral moraine
on the side of the glacier. A lateral
moraine is a long pile of loose dirt and rocks that a glacier pushes out to the
side as it moves along.
We spent about a half hour walking around on the
glacier. It was cold and icy. The surface of the ice has a very thin layer
of dust and grit deposited from the air.
Russ filled his water bottle with melted glacier water. They encourage you to do that. The purest of water. It was very exciting to be out there.
The Columbia Icefield is a huge bowl of ice between several mountain
peaks, that is replenished with more snow every winter. That ice brims over the top of the bowl to
feed 4 glaciers. Ice melt from these
glaciers goes to three oceans – Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic.
After the glacier, you board another bus that takes you to the
Skywalk, a glass bridge high above the Sunwapta River canyon where you can have
a literal birds-eye view of the wonders of the area. Dana chose not to go (read as “was terrified”),
Russ went out and took this video.
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| Female Big Horn Sheep and a youngster |
From there you board yet another bus back to the Icefields
Center. The whole experience takes over
2 hours. We had arrived at 3 the afternoon
before and left at 1 the next day. 22
hours with such a beautiful and interesting view. If you are an RVer – we recommend that you
put this on your bucket list.
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| Russ grabbing some melted glacier water |
The drive on to Jasper was anticlimactic. The wildfire smoke that had been present but
not heavy since we arrived in Canada, became very dense and obscured every
mountain and view.
When we arrived at Whistler campground in Jasper, we were
told to avoid the Elk, as they were rutting and could be dangerous. When we arrived at our campsite, we found 4
of them lazily grazing on the grass in our campsite, with 3 more doing the same
across the street. So much for avoiding
them.
It rained that night, and the rain clouds along with the smoke
further obscured the view. We had been
monitoring road closures and talking to folks located along (or who had
traveled) our route from Jasper to Vancouver to make sure we would not be impacted
by the wildfires in Southern British Columbia.
On the drive the next day, we had some areas of heavy smoke, but
generally it was just a little smokey.
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