Icefields Parkway

We were on the road by 8:30.  Called the most beautiful drive in the world, we started up the 232 km (about 140 miles) Icefields Parkway towards Jasper National Park.  Glaciers, lakes, rivers, waterfalls and wildflowers abound.  Every corner held something new.  Being in the motorhome, it is often difficult to stop at scenic attractions along the way so we made few stops and will hopefully return to many of them along the way.  When we went through the check-in point for Jasper, we were given a great fold-out map of the Parkway with mileages to different hikes and viewpoints.  Hopefully we will have time to return to many of them.

A little over a half hour into our trip, we came upon cars parked on either side of the road.  There was a grizzly bear feeding in the ditch with cars no more than ten feet away and people standing beside their cars.  There are warning signs everywhere warning about getting that close to bears.  Some people have no brains at all.  I tried to snap a couple pictures as we inched our way through the vehicles and people but didn't want to add to the chaos so we kept on going.  Fifteen minutes later, another bear (a small light brown grizzly), same story.

First Bear

Second Bear 

Passing Saskatchewan River Crossing where the Howse, Mistaya and North Saskatchewan rivers meet and Route 11 connects to the Icefields Parkway, I looked down Route 11 and could see smoke from a forest fire just starting not far away.  We were lucky to get through as they had closed the road after we went through. (As I am finally posting this, the forest fire has been burning for over two weeks and has burned more than a hundred square miles.)

Smoke from a Just Starting Forest Fire

We stopped at Parker Ridge for a break on our way up to Sunwapta Pass which is the boundary between Banff and Jasper Parks.  Parker Ridge has a 2.5 km trail that leads to Saskatchewan Glacier that we may want to climb later.  There is still snow on the smooth slate (shale) mountain and we could see where people had carved turns on their skis coming down.

Parker Ridge

Ski Trails Lower Left

The highlight of the day was stopping at the Icefields Centre and taking a ride on a snocoach to the Athabasca Glacier.  We bought our tickets and waited in line for 20-25 minutes before boarding a bus that took us across the road and up to where we then boarded the Ice Explorer.  This six wheel drive hybrid bus/truck has huge, fat tires that are under-inflated to make it able to get traction on the glacier and the lateral moraine leading to the glacier.  The tires are five feet high, three feet wide and last only two years at a replacement cost for the six of $30,000 every two years.  The drivers of the busses and Ice Explorer were informative along the way.  The huge lateral moraine, or piles of rock and gravel on the side of where glaciers have receded had tracks of mountain goats and holes of marmots but we didn't see either animal.  The maximum speed to the vehicle is 19 km/hr.  There are twenty-three of these vehicles in existence and twenty-two of them are here.  At the top of the moraine, there is a drop with a 34% grade to get down to the glacier.  This is the second steepest grade of anywhere in North America.  The steepest grades are equal, one in the northern oil fields and one somewhere in Colorado.  It was scary.

Entering Jasper National Park

Athabasca Glacier

Athabasca Glacier

River in the Moraine

BIG  Tires

BIG Tire Tracks

Going Down the 34%Grade

Moraine

Glacial Ice

Our Ice Explorer

We were allowed twenty minutes on the glacier and only where they had plowed a large circular area into the ice.  This prevents people from falling down crevasses.  Crevice = rock, crevasse = ice.  They lose about two people a year from falling in crevasses.  It takes about two and a half hours to get a rescue team there and people usually only live forty-five minutes in the ice.  While our driver has been here, their success rate has been zero for six. Not good odds!

We stayed where we were supposed to taking photos and admiring the blue ice of the glacier.  It was cold and windy but we each had four layers so were nice and toasty except for Ted's feet that he said were cold.  There were little rivulets of water running down showing evidence of melting.  The glacier advances fifteen feet each year and loses twenty-five feet to melting with a net loss of ten feet a year. 

When we returned to the Centre, we looked for a museum that we thought was there.  One of the drivers said the building had newly been redone so perhaps there was no longer a museum or it was not yet completed.  At any rate we went back to the motorhome for lunch before continuing up the road.

The Skywalk had too many people out there for my liking

We continued to our campsite at Pocahontas (not Kim) Campground beyond Jasper seeing more animals along the way.  When we got there, the campsite we had reserved had a tent in it.  We pulled into a vacant lot and went to find someone to help us.  After much conversation we found a campsite until Friday but need to find one somewhere for the weekend which may be tricky.

Tally for today:  Grizzly Bears, 2; Black Bears, 2 adults, 1 cub; Longhorn Sheep, 4 adults, 1 lamb; Elk, 3; Loons, 2.