VISIT CANADA -9

 

Banff National Park is Canada’s first national park and the second established in North America after Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Established in 1885, the Park encompasses 6,641 square kilometers of mountainous terrain, with numerous glacier and icefields, dense coniferous forest and alpine landscapes. In 1985, the United Nations declared this Park, as one of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, a World Heritage Site. The main commercial centre of the park is the town of Banff. At 1,463 m (4,800 ft), this town has the highest elevation in Canada. Banff is a major destination for outdoor sports like hiking, biking and skiing.

We left our hotel in Banff town in the morning and headed for catching the first possible Sulphur Mountain Gondola. These Gondolas, climbing from the lower terminal at the bottom of the Sulphur Mountain, take you up to 7486 feet above sea level in about eight minutes. One gets to have a beautiful 360 degree view of all surrounding mountaintops. From the observation terrace of the upper terminal, one can walk up to the historic Cosmic Station for yet another breathtaking view of the valley below. Standing atop Sulphur Mountain, one can also see Lake Louise and Moraine Lake in the distance and these two famed lakes were next on our itinerary but more about them later. You can see the pictures of the Sulphur Mountain for now.

Gondola in flight

From Cosmic Station to Gondola Terminus and View of Banff Town from above

TransCanada Highway 1 connects Banff and Lake Louise but Bow Valley Parkway, called as Highway 1A, provides a scenic alternative. 1A also takes you via Johnston Canyon, one of Banff Park’s most visited attractions and as one walks on the pathway and sees the water gushing out of those gorges, one understands why. As I was walking to the Lower Falls, I noticed a wooden signboard with a quote from a Canadian painter. . I liked the quote and wrote it down immediately. Similar impulse had seized me when I first saw that painting in the corridor of our hotel in Victoria when we had lost no time in taking its picture. It always is a spontaneous reaction. The sign also mentioned that Walter Phillips was so captivated by the beauty of Johnston Canyon, that he kept returning to it, again and again, to enjoy its many moods.

“Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence.”

Lower Falls in Johnston Canyon

Lake Louise, known as ‘Lake of little fishes’ by Stony Indians, was first shown by a Stony guide to a Canadian explorer in 1882; the latter wanted to name it as Emerald Lake. However the colonial Government had different ideas and the lake was named after Queen Victoria’s daughter as we had seen earlier.

You can see above the Lake Louise at it appears in summer. The emerald colour of the water comes from rock flour carried into the lake by melt-water from the glaciers that overlook the lake. You can also see Chateau Lake Louise - a luxury resort hotel built in the early decades of the 20th century by the Canadian Pacific Railway. You can now see it below as we saw it when the summer had not yet set in.

We were early and the summer had not yet begun; we could see only the frozen version of the Lake Louise and also that of the Morain Lake since, both these lakes are fed by the surrounding glaciers. Morain Lake, set in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, provided a backdrop scene for the back of the Canadian $20 bill for many years. You can see Manu on Morain Lake.

Seeing a frozen lake is a novel experience. Frozen Lake Louise appears regularly in a TV commercial in the United States. But I was to undergo a strange experience on the following day while motoring out to Jasper. As I looked, over the intervening frozen mass of water, and across to the distant hills, I somehow felt that I was  grossly underestimating the distance to these hills; the whole landscape appeared two-dimensional, with the third dimension of depth making a complete disappearance. I remarked to Mukul that we humans paint our curtains and the draperies for creating a three-dimensional effect on the theatre-stage, but ironically enough, the Nature appears to have taken away one dimension from this three-dimensional landscape. May be it was some kind of an optical illusion, or was it ?

Tomorrow, we begin our journey from Banff to Jasper.