1993/07 Rockies trip - Icefields Parkway |
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Monday July 5th
We were making a day trip north on the Icefield Parkway through the Banff park to Jasper, 
but heavy rain blotted out the mountains in the morning. We hiked up to Peyto lake - another beautiful blue - in the rain, only to find out that the tour buses are allowed to drive to the top of the hill, so we were soon joined by forty Japanese madly posing and clicking. It is not sufficient in Japan to have pictures of where you have been. You have to be in the picture too. You must be able to point to the background and say "I was there!".
However we saw flowers that the bus passengers didn't, including these unusual paintbrush and these pretty wintergreen.
North of Peyto the road takes a long curve and climbs the hill into the Jasper park. We stopped to look at Bridal Veil Falls, not an imaginative name but a pretty waterfall.
We stopped at the Athabasca Glacier to take the bus trip out onto the ice. This is now a major commercial undertaking, with people being herded from their tour buses, to shuttle buses, and then finally onto the snow coaches with the giant wheels.
The picture shows three of the snow coaches on their way across the lateral moraine and up onto the Athabasca Glacier, which is just one of the glaciers that flow down from the Columbia Icefield.
The yellow snowmobile is a relic from the days before the tour buses.
Luckily, we had a two hour wait for a bus, and by the time we got out there, the weather had
cleared and we had a good view of the surrounding mountains and glaciers. Although the bus
trips add up to an hour and a half, you only get 15 minutes to jump around on the ice, which is
probably quite sufficient if it's raining or snowing! 
Up on the ice it was absolute chaos, with maybe half a dozen buses and a few hundred people of umpteen nationalities milling about at a time. We saw the pictures of the moose that died on the ice hundreds of years ago and only
recently popped out at the nose of the glacier. Well, 140 years from now, when that area of ice
makes it to the nose, it'll be dumping out piles of Japanese with their Nikons.
There are streams running across the ice, sometimes disappearing into a hole and maybe all the way to the glacier's base, where the water lubricates the glacier's path down the hill. With the ice fall filling the valley and a hanging glacier above us, it's a spectacular place to be but it's definitely not safe. That little kid just behind John and Edna definitely shouldn't be exploring on his own.
After the bus trip we walked down to the nose of the glacier.The nose area is different on every visit as the glacier is retreating. It used to be a short walk from the road, and then it became a drive and a walk..The mud around the pools below the nose is referred to as "glacial goop"; it definitely stays with you.
Afterwards, we continued up the Icefields
Parkway, stopping off to look at the big waterfalls. 
The first was Sunwapta Falls, fed by the icy waters of the Sunwapta River, one of the outlets from the Athabasca Glacier. There is a lower falls too, but it's more difficult to see and photograph.
The next was Athabasca Falls. The water came from the same glacier, but this time as the larger Athabasca
River. The ground was shaking with the violence of the tumbling water.
We also had lots of bear stops, bear reversals, and bear U-turns. These were all for black bears, who seemed to be enjoying eating by the roadside. By July all the winterkilled animals had been eaten but the summer's berry crop had not yet ripened, so the bears were eating the grass around the roads. In a few weeks the bears would be up in the mountain meadows eating berries, with very few visible at the roadside.
Eventually, we had to give up on sightseeing, and go on to Jasper and eat a very late lunch.
We stopped at
We ended up driving back to Lake Louise in the dark and rain, arriving close to midnight.
Luckily, the dinner that Sandie had put on to cook in the morning had been set on the low side so it was still OK for the next day's lunch.