After marveling at how the river running along the highway changed from running west to running east as we crossed the Continental Divide and entered Alberta once again, we headed towards Lake Louise, just to see it. We should have known better. We sat in traffic, stopped multiple times to wait for waddlers to meander across the streets as they gawked at the mountains, totally oblivious to cars and buses and RVs, and ultimately found a place to turn around so we could get the hell out of there. We got on the Icefields Parkway, which is an impressively scenic road that runs through Banff and into Jasper. Banff is incredibly beautiful, with towering mountains, shining glaciers, and unbelievably blue glacial lakes, And, once you’re out of the Banff village and Lake Louise areas, the density of people dwindles dramatically. Traffic on the Icefields Parkway doesn’t move too fast, because everybody is taking in the scenery, and every few miles you find a pullout for a spectacular view or a trailhead. We stopped at the Bow Lake trailhead where we had lunch with a view, and then hiked part of the Bow Lake trail around the lake. We didn’t go all the way to the waterfall because we didn’t feel like we were up to another steep climb after the Hoodoos and the Avalanche Hikes the previous two days, but we got plenty of great views as we walked around the lake.
After our hike, we continued north towards Jasper. On our map, we had found a FCFS RV campground near the entrance to the park which said it had 100 sites. We were glad we’d made this our destination rather than one of the smaller campgrounds slightly closer to the park Banff/Jasper border, because while this campground really is just a paved parking lot, it’s a paved parking lot which is the front row for the view of the Columbia Icefields. After seeing a few glaciers in the US Glacier NP, and a few more larger glaciers in the Canadian Glacier NP, we were completely unprepared for the massive Columbia Icefields which is right there, next to the road. It is receding dramatically year by year, but we still found ourselves standing in front of our truck and staring at it with our mouths open. We resisted the urge to immediately walk to it, mostly because Tom had the good sense to realize that even though it is so big it looked like we could reach out and touch it, it was actually about a mile and a half away, which I realized when I considered that the small dots we could see crawling up it were actually gigantic trac buses hauling loads of tourists onto the icefield. We talked to some other campers, and then had dinner and settled in for the night.
In the morning, we walked to the glacier, which was as far away as Tom had estimated. The walk was somewhat sad, because signs along the way show where the glacier was every five years or so, and the amount it has receded is frighteningly impressive. Nonetheless, it is enormous, and seeing what it has done to the earth beneath it as it has receded is a big reminder of the power of nature. We also found that this glacier is the source for the headwaters of the Athabasca River, which runs to the Mackenzie River, which we would eventually follow to the Arctic Ocean.
A waterfall on the Athabasca River, not too awfully far from the glacier.
We left the Columbia Icefield with the intention of stopping for a walk at Mount Edith Cavell, but discovered that the road to Mount Edith Cavell doesn’t allow vehicles over 21’. So, we continued on to Jasper, where we did a bit of shopping. We had noticed as we approached Jasper that most of the campgrounds were full, so we were relieved to find another parking lot campground with plenty of room between the town of Jasper and the park boundary. This campground was listed as having over 200 places, and it was in a very picturesque spot on the river between the mountains. We decided that it was probably a better option than any of the full campgrounds since with all that space, it was easy to find a spot away from other campers even though the sites would have been close together, had they all been filled. We spent one last quiet night in Jasper NP before starting the drive north to the Yukon, where we planned to pick up the Dempster Highway and head for the Arctic Ocean.
