September 12
This morning we awoke to cold temperatures and stunning blue skies for our departure from Jasper. Even better, it had snowed overnight on some of the lower mountains. The air was cold and brisk but the sun warmed us up as we loaded our gear back into the truck and headed for our next stop, Banff National Park, by way of The Icefields Parkway or La Promenade des Glaciers in French, which I think gives it a beautifully romantic feel.
If I were Shakespeare I couldn’t write eloquently enough to describe the 200 or so miles of this trip, so I’m just going to give you a brief overview and then post a few photos, which also can’t do justice to what we saw. It’s the best I can do and I mean that!
Our first stop was at Sunwapta Falls, which is a long channel consisting of several large drop offs, where the river flows dramatically. We hiked to the bottom of the falls and back, while most of the crowd stayed at the top. It was nice to have it all to ourselves.
As we left that area, the road meandered through a long set of mountain passes with stunning views on both sides. As soon as we’d see one snow-capped peak, a new one would pop out from behind it. There were lakes along the way too, where the mountains were reflected in the brilliant blue-green water. The sun was so bright, bouncing off all the snow and water, that we could barely take it all in. Here are just a few examples:
Another highlight was Tangle Creek Falls, just an enormous amount of water spraying out of a wall. Doesn’t sound like much, but since it’s on the side of the road it stops traffic!
The next stop was the Columbia Icefield, the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains, which consists of six major glaciers. It’s not clear to us why it’s allowed, but you can walk on it, or you can take a tour where they DRIVE YOU IN A BUS onto the ice. We parked by a sign that showed where the toe of the field was in 1925, which was at least half a mile from the ice.
After taking tons of photos and the requisite selfie, we proceeded through the next phase of the Canadian Rockies, which was just as incredible to me. Nothing like what the Rocky Mountains further south in the US look like to me. So many interesting shapes haphazardly stacked in gravity-defying piles to make an odd formation that end up covered with a blanket of white that highlights all the pieces. Dozens of them and they’re all fantastically different from each other.
It went on and on like this all day, until we reached Banff where we found our little rental cottage and tried to calm down after the overwhelming grandeur we’d just experienced.
___________
Leave a comment