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Lake Louise, AB → Jasper, AB → Lake Louise, AB 318.0 km (197.6 mi) |
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Valar explore this, everyone!
We’re spending today on one of Canada’s, maybe the world’s, most stunning stretches of road, the Icefield Highway! 232 kilometers (144 miles) long, it connects the town of Lake Louise with the town of Jasper in the north, and all along the way, it’s peaks and forests and glaciers! Lining its whole west side is the Columbia Icefield, Canada’s largest, and the source of six different glaciers! Today, we’re scheduled to walk on one of them, the Athabasca Glacier!
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To get there, we boarded the mountain goat Ice Explorer, oldest in a fleet operated by the Columbia Icefield Adventure! Ice Explorers are super specialized vehicles for traveling responsibly on glaciers. With the exception of two in Antarctica, all Ice Explorers in the world are found right here! These 27-ton trucks are equipped with six huge tires that have low pressure for more traction and less impact on the ice. Their diesel is filtered, and their hydraulic fluid is biodegradable! Plus, after descending one of the world’s steepest commercial roads, they pass through a big puddle to minimize the heat-trapping dirt tracked up onto the ice. It’s the most anyone can do to balance tourist demand with what is left of a glacier that’s been receding since 1840, five meters (16 feet) every year!
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Well, crowd control was another way. This is one of Canada’s most visited glaciers, so unlike in Antarctica, this ice walk was going to be completely penned in. We had only half an hour to wander around what was essentially a parking lot!
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And well, the ravages of time and climate change were pretty clear! There weren’t any big crags or crevasses to marvel over, just a long slope of slush, lined with bright blue streams. Our driver recommended that we all taste some of the fresh glacier water, and so I did! It was cold and refreshing, something that might not be experienced much longer.
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But gosh, I can’t get enough of these bright glacier blues! Before it’s glacial flour coloring the rivers, the ice of these glaciers plays a similar optics game, absorbing long wavelengths and reflecting short ones, blue especially! All of these streams were trickling down to the valley floor, collecting in a meltwater lake that is so new, it hasn’t been named yet. Our driver, Chris, called it Chris Lake!
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But what happens when the trickling stops? The Columbia Icefield is called the “mother of rivers” because of how much fresh water it sends flowing across the continent and into three oceans. Columbia ice reaches the Atlantic via the Saskatchewan River, the Pacific via the Columbia River, and even the Arctic Ocean via the Mackenzie River! From my vantage point, Mount Kitchener was as mystical as Olympus, maybe more so!
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Speaking of vantage points, the second part of our Icefield Adventure was a visit to a super unique metal platform, stretching precariously way out over the steep cliffs of the Sunwapta River Valley. It looked kind of scary, but I could see lots of folks walking all over it! As a major attraction adjacent to the Athabasca glacier, I figured it was going to be just fine.
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In fact, the Skywalk is pretty remarkable! Made of self-sealing Corten steel, it’s bolted in by 34 anchors whose foundations extend 52 feet into the rock! It’s so sturdy that it could theoretically support all 22 Ice Explorers—1.3 tons worth—and has four half-ton dampers that absorb vibrations! Opened in 2014, it’s still going strong after its first decade, but there were still plenty of folks wavering on the cement edge of the platform, clutching the rails, and begging their friends not to make them go any farther.
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That’s because the Skywalk floor is clear glass, situated 918 feet above the bottom of the canyon! Just like the CN Tower, the braver folks were lying down on the glass and taking photos to make it look like they were plummeting to their doom! Who was I to spoil anyone’s good time? Whooooa!
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But the Skywalk gave some really spectacular views of the valley and its surrounding peaks. Ahead were Mount Athabasca and Hilda Peak, with the their strongest glaciers still hanging on, as they have for millennia. There’s a lot to learn from anything that can stay cool as everything heats up around it!
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And heat was very much in the headlines on this trip! After we lunched at the Icefield Centre’s buffet, we headed north toward Jasper. This stretch of Icefield Highway just reopened this morning after being closed for a whole month, following devastating wildfires in July that forced the whole town to evacuate! Fueled by over 45 million acres of pine beetle-killed trees, high summer temperatures, and strong winds, this inferno came with 330-foot high flames and destroyed nearly a third of all buildings in Jasper!
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The drive into town was shocking, with plenty of buildings scorched or flattened. The hardest hit area was just north of us, though off in the distance, the hills were still smoldering. It was super ominous to witness, like a monstrous spirit just pausing to take a breath after a bout of havoc! We chatted with a fellow who’d just returned and was now living in an motorhome with his wife next to the charred remains of what was once their home. What was going to come next for them? With winter coming up in a few months, it was hard to say. He seemed to be in good spirits, all things considered, and we wished him well, not really being able to comprehend what he’d gone through in one short month.
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Around us, it was amazing which buildings had survived intact. For instance, the 110-year old Jasper Information Centre was still there to greet us, as it had done for railroad passengers back in 1914. It was the first major building in the young town, which had only been surveyed the year before, and many other buildings in Jasper modeled their aesthetics off of it.
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Whether ironically or fittingly, the 1936 Jasper Fire Hall was still standing too! Also patterned in Rustic Style, like the information center, it’s still in use as a fire hall today, and Jasper National Park’s Communication Center! Well, it will be again, once the town has recovered. It could be a while, sadly, but it will surely bounce back just as beautifully as before!
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Since the Fiddle River Restaurant was very closed, Ross and Terri’s 40th anniversary would need to be celebrated in more humble environs. So we cooked up a stew and celebrated their four decades together at a picnic table in the Silverhorn Creek Campground! When I asked them what their secret was to forty years together, they said patience, compromise, and a sense of humor!
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And well, that was a great philosophy for life at large. Like a river in the wilderness, life hits rocks and has to find ways around them, but gosh, it sure is a pretty journey along the way! This will be our last sunset in the Rockies. It’s been a wild and wonderful trip, already approaching a week in length! Can you imagine how many moments of wonder can fit into forty years? It boggles the mind!
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We closed out our night as storm clouds rolled in from the south, hailed by hyper-aggressive barking from the dogs in the campsite next to ours. But they were soon defeated by a spectacular lightning show! The three of us stood outside watching for a long while, and you know what? It sure felt like anniversary fireworks! Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up and return to Calgary with a few pretty stops along the way, so don’t go anywhere yet!
Hasta la lightning!
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Total Ground Covered: 1,164.7 km (722.7 mi) |
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