Western Canadian Rockies – Day 8 – To Banff

This morning (I'm back on track with the right day, the 17th) we left Jasper and head to Banff driving south along the Icefields Parkway (CA 93).  The weather is perfect this morning; we can see Mt Cavell very clearly with no cloud cover.  Unfortunately, my camera memory card failed later in the day and I lost all of the pictures, so no picture of the clear mountain.  But Carmen did take pictures of several of the mountains, all majestic.

As we head south on CA 93, we made a detour to visit Athabasca Falls.  Carmen was not taking pictures of the falls since she had the wrong lens on her camera, but she did get this picture.

We returned to CA 93 south where the mountains continue to impress us.  The mountains are beautiful, sharp and snow covered.  All I can say is that these mountains are absolutely fantastic.

We pass the forward edge of the Stutfield glacier which has less ice then in years pass because of a calving of the ice.  The left face of the glacier still has some of the ice cascading down.

Again, the mountains we see are so fantastic they have snow covered rocky spires some hundreds of feet thick.

I had asked Art if we would stop at the Tangle Falls just before we reach the Columbia Icefields, he said yes.  So he made a special effort for us to stop while other tour groups drove by.  Thanks to Art and Adrian, I was able to get my picture of Tangle Falls.

 

After a short stay, we left the falls and within a few kilometers, we are at the Columbia Icefield.  To get there we need to hop on board a different bus and ride to where the Ice Explorers will bring us another couple of kilometers.  (Follow the road in this picture and the lateral moraine  about a third of the way up from the bottom and a third of the way from the right, you’ll see a little white line that comes to an end.  That is where we will take the Ice Explorer.)

 

There we hop off of the buss and get into our Ice Explorer, a 3-axel, 6-wheel vehicle and travel along this ice road to get to our terminus which is on the glacier.  The glacier at that location is about 1000 feet thick.

When we arrive at our destination, we have a good view of the three-tiered ice fall coming down from the Columbia Icefield to help build the Athabasca Glacier.

 

It is hard to imagine but Carmen and I are standing on 1000 feet of ice and in front of the ice falls.  The temperature was not too cold, though it was getting colder the longer we stayed outside.

 

There was a brook of glacier water running along the glacier.  It disappeared, either in a hole or behind a ridge, but I did not go looking for it.  Everyone was drinking water from the slush and it did not look so clean.  Too bad, had I gone to this brook, I could have had thousand year old water to drink.

From our location on the glacier and looking back to the road and visitors center, you can see how flat it looks.  It is deceiving that we are on a thousand feet of ice.

Here are the Ice Explorers that we used to travel along the glacier.  Ours is the middle one. You can see the size of the vehicles by the people standing next to them. So to give you an example, the tires are about 5 feet high and 3 ¼ feet wide. 

Here is the A-A Glacier, so named because it is between Mt Athabasca (3442 meters high - on the left) and Mt Andromeda (3450 meters - on right).

So we begin to head back and this is the ice road we used to travel to out onto the glacier.  We are now returning the same way and you can clearly see the steepness of the climb back up to the busses.  That is an 18% grade we will go up.  The bus on the bottom of the hill is going through the water run off from the glacier.

As we reached the top while waiting for the bus, I saw these people hiking the glacier.  The told us that you could hike the glacier, even climb the three-tiered ice falls and up onto the Columbia Icefield, but you should have a guide and tied by ropes to each other.  This is to help if you fall through a crevasse.  These people do not look like they have any ropes.  Good luck,

After a quick lunch and before we leave for Banff, we get one last glimpse of the Athabasca Glacier.  Look at how tiny the Ice Explorers look!  So you know we traveled some distance to get to the top of the glacier.

We continue on our way and look at the mountain scenery we have.  You can see the snow up on the ridge leaning over the edge.

As we were driving along, there was a sort of traffic jam up ahead.  When we got there and drove by slowly, we see that there was a mountain goat causing all of the commotion.  We went by just as slowly as everyone else.

We see waterfalls coming down off of the mountains from the glacial run off.  Here is one of the typical waterfalls.

We pass mountains that are fantastic to view; it is difficult not to take a picture, from big flat top mountains.

To pyramid mountains, some in the clouds, some creating their own clouds, like this one and every shape in between.

And still other mountains with glaciers.  If it was not for Adrian driving the bus, I don’t think I would have made Banff at a reasonable time.

Before Banff, we make a quick stop to view Peyto Lake.  What a fantastic view.  The color of the water in the lake was aqua and I hope the color comes through in the photo.  I think they should rename the lake to Wolf Lake because of the wolf profile the lake creates – just my opinion.

While at the lake overlook, we spotted a golden mantled ground squirrel. 

After photographing many more fantastic mountains than I can count, we turn down the road to go to Lake Louise.  Here is the lake looking to Victoria Glacier at the end of the lake. 

Here is Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise from across Lake Louise.

A Clarks Nutcracker sat and posed in all its glory.

And finally have I mentioned how fantastic the mountain views are?  We make it to Banff our final destination for the night and the views are still fantastic.  Tomorrow more time in Banff, until the Bob and Carmen.