Day 8: The Icefields Parkway to Banff
Columbia Icefield Parkway
Athabasca Glacier
Animals!
Fairmont Banff Springs
Today, we traveled from Jasper National Park back down to Banff National Park via the Icefields Parkway, rated as one of the world’s top scenic drives by Condé Nast Traveler.
As we left Jasper Park Lodge, we saw one of the original cars used to shuttle famous guests around in the olden days.
But more importantly, a minute or two later, a small herd of elk came into few— a few females and a bull with an impressive rack!
We were en route to the Columbia Icefields and its six offshoot glaciers, specifically the largest, Athabasca Glacier. We passed Cadomin Mountain, and found the hidden falls that only can be seen in this direction.
We donned all our layers in preparation for this visit, even Wendy’s raincoat as it had been raining on and off this morning as we made our way to the glacier area— the first rain we had seen all week.
The Columbia Icefield is the largest ice mass south of the Arctic Circle and the Athabasca is the largest walkable glacier in North America.
Accessing the glacier it is a very well-organized three-part process, moving the hundreds of people up and back in an efficient and environmentally safe manner.
First, we boarded a large bus that took us on a five minute ride to the site across the street where the glacier was.
Then onto a second vehicle, a very specialized ice bus with large wheels that each weighed a ton. This Ice Explorer very slowly and carefully climbed through several moraine areas until it actually got on the glacier, and drove up about 2/3rds of the way to the top.
Here, after putting on our crampons that we had bought with us, over our shoes, we got out to walk on the glacier. The rain had stopped, and the beautiful sunny weather that we had begun to take for granted returned, and we had a fun time pigeon-toe walking across the mostly slushy ice.
There were several crevasses that were roped off as well as a couple of mill wells of swirling water that were dangerous, but mostly, it was pretty easy, safe and beautiful.
Only the very top layer is slushy, and prepared that way to make it safer for the tourists.The glacier is approximately 6 km (3.7 mi) long, covers an area of 6 km2 (2.3 sq mi), and is measured to be between 90–300 metres (300–980 ft) thick. It is said that it loses 5 meters ( 16 feet) per year, and will ( perhaps) be gone by the end of the century.
Many pictures later, we repeated the transfer process in reverse and arrived back at the Athabasca Discovery center.
Our guide Tanja provided us a bit of a warm-up treat along with some maple creme cookies when we got back on the road.
A quick stop for lunch at the same rest stop we had eaten at on our way down the Icefields Parkway, and then continued on to Banff.
We drove through the quaint touristy town and up to the majestic Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, an enormous castle-like hotel.
Again, the view from our room was magnificent, looking out to the mountains and the Bow River in the distance. We finished the evening trying to eat a bit lighter ( ha!) with Wendy having some mussels, and Jim having fish for dinner.
