VISIT CANADA -10

 

“Majestic doesn't even begin to describe this place. It's like Nature saved her finest jewels for Banff and Jasper. It's the kind of place you think only exists in photographs – which is a shame, really. Photographs don't nearly do it justice.”

(Extracted from the Web—but it expresses exactly what I felt when I saw it all)

We left our hotel in Banff and set out on our journey towards Jasper. After one crosses Lake Louise village, Highway 93 (Icefields Parkway) branches off to Jasper. The journey turned out to be the most spectacular road travel that I ever had. Highway 93 is internationally known as one of the most magnificent mountain drives to be found anywhere in the world. The road curves around mountains, climbs high passes and follows three major river systems flowing through wide hanging valleys and goes past the Athabasca Glacier and Columbia Icefields; the resultant vistas simply take one’s breath away.

We stopped en route, as all tourists do, for seeing Crowfoot Glacier, Bow Lake, Peyto Lake and finally at Columbia Icefield. Glaciers and Icefields were frozen as could be expected , but the summer had not yet fully set in and  some of the lakes  were in the process of thawing.

Bow Lake

Bow Summit and Peyto lake

Crowfoot Glacier

We now move on to Columbia Icefield – undoubtedly a major attraction for all tourists that visit Banff and Jasper. But I think we need to know its geography too.

Continental Divide

The Columbia Icefield is composed of a massive plateau of ice, and six major glaciers (and numerous smaller ones). Straddling the Great Continental Divide (marked in RED in above map) that runs along and over the Rocky Mountains, the icefield feeds three of the continent’s major river systems: the Columbia, Mackenzie and Saskatchewan. Meltwaters from the icefield flow to three different oceans (the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic). Called a hydrological apex, it is one of only two in North America that feeds three oceans, the other being Triple Divide Peak on the Montana/Idaho border in United States at the junction of the Great and the Northern Continental Divide (marked in GREEN).

We took a tour of the Athabasca Glacier / Columbia Icefield in a snow-coach (Brewster Ice Explorer). You can see these old and new snow vehicles and also the Icefield below.

 

We had selected a hotel near Sunwapta Falls for Jasper – the last leg of our tour. It was quite late when we reached our hotel but we had got used to that by now..

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