July 15; from Jasper to Banff

A few miles out of the town of Jasper, we saw a “critter jam”.  Jim does his best not to pass up such opportunities.  There were 8 to 10 female and Juvenile elk near the road.  We had seen female elk a few times before, but this had a special twist.  Every one of them was looking off to one side.  Perhaps there was a predator there, but nobody saw one.

Our first goal for the day was Athabasca Falls, about 18 miles from the town of Jasper.  The waterfall is “only” about 80 feet high but has a very large volume flowing over it and it cuts interesting slices from the rocks.

One place traps logs.  We watched 2 logs get trapped and a different one come free.

A Parks Canada Guide  showed how to tell different animals by their antlers.

Our next destination was the Columbia Icefields Visitors’ Center and the nearby Athabasca Glacier.  The center had a model of the huge icefield that is over 125 square miles in area and over 1100 feet deep in places.  It feeds 8 major glaciers and covers the only triple continental divie in North America.  Some of its melted ice ends up in the Atlantic Ocean (via Hudson Bay), some in the Pacific and some in the Arctic Ocean.

Ardith especially liked the quilt done by both French and English women in the town of Jasper.  This area is still part of Jasper National Park.

Across the parkway from the visitors’ center is the Athabasca Glacier, the most visited in North America. 

Since we had both walked on glaciers previously, we bypassed the bus tours that take you onto the glaciers and let you walk around under the surveillance of a guide.  The buses have 6 wheel drive and monstrous tires.  We drove across the street and Jim hiked to near the toe of the glacier.  Everybody was heeding the warning signs (and fence) and not attempting to approach the glacier that way. Jim fully understood why.

The road between Jasper and Lake Louise is called Icefields Parkway.  Nearly every peak along it was ice capped in mid-July. 

There are other glaciers that are visible from there.

Also other waterfalls:

At one of many stops, Jim got an opportunity for a picture of a Clark’s Nuthatch that was perched on a pole.

We just had some granola bars earlier, so we were ready to eat when we pulled into the town of Lake Louise at about 4:15.  We drove past a shopping center that had some chain restaurants, but decided to press on in quest for something different, despite it not looking likely.  There was a sign with utensils pointing down a fairly unpopulated road.  We pulled up to a nice looking log building that was the former railroad station.  A small sign indicated it was a restaurant, but there was only 1 car in the parking lot.  We thought it might be closed.  We ventured in and were told “yes, we are open and ready to serve you” in response to our query.  It was just an odd time to be eating and other folks came in later.  The place was quite charming with a lot of furniture that probably dated back to the 1930s or earlier.  We had our choice of seats and sat by the fireplace – a nice thing after several chilly outings. 

Our food was quite tasty.  Jim had a wonderful spinach salad and Ardith had a prime rib “sandwich” complete with Yorkshire pudding that she absolutely adored.  Despite having had almost no lunch, we passed on desserts.

We were free to roam the interior of the building.  There were lots of artifacts from its day as a railroad station, including old photos.   The real treasures were the old posters for the Canadian Pacific Railroad.  Ardith’s favorite great uncle had worked for the CPR for 50 years, much of it as a conductor.  He was often gone on long trips.  We speculated about his having been here many times.

There were some older rail cars on the premises that were set up as places to hold parties or other special events.

Several lists of local wildlife between Alaska and here had mentioned marmots.  Jim had been looking for them, with no success.  There was a colony lining in the lawn here, so Jim was quite happy.

From there, we proceeded to the actual lake at Lake Louise. 

Several sources had told us it should be avoided between 10AM and 5PM.  We arrived about 5:30 and crowds were quickly thinning.  This lovely lake has only one focal point, so there is a large parking lot and a large bus drop-off place.  By the time we sauntered past the huge, elegant old hotel, there were only a few dozen people remaining.  We at last have some photographic evidence that the 2 of us were at the same place at the same time (OK, Jim could have faked it in Photoshop).

We walked around a large part of the lake and got pictures from different angles.

The road from Lake Louise (which is in Banff National Park) to the town of Banff is along the Trans Canada Highway and travels through relatively flat territory.  They are attempting to allow wildlife to thrive in the area while minimizing the chances of motorist – critter crunches, so they have erected miles of high heavy duty fencing along with elaborate crossing places roughly every 2 kilometers.  There were also a few tunnels for smaller creatures.  There is a major effort underway to allow re-introduction of bison to the area.  These were completely eliminated in the Canadian Rockies by the fur trade in the 19^th century.  The crossings and other protections are vital to this effort.

Jasper Part Two

At the heart of the town of Jasper, the park visitors’ center stands out by being on a big open piece of property and made of local materials.  It was designed by one of the very early park superintendents and helps set design standards for the town.  They gave us really good advice for our hikes through the park. 

On the grounds outside, they used cones for mulch around their evergreen trees.  It was quite nice at least visually, but we have no idea how effective it is as a mulch.  Since growing conditions are harsh here, weeds have a harder time getting established, so little mulching is actually needed.

Jim popped out of the car to take a picture of some nice scenery at one of many such places and his nose was assaulted with a rotten egg smell.  A nearby sign said that this place was called Cold Sulfur Spring.  The milky white color of the outflow was from other minerals, but the smell was from the sulfur.

Wildlife was abundant in the park, both small and large animals made appearances from time to time.  We watched a group of golden mantled ground squirrels apparently playing.

A different kind of ground squirrel, a Columbian, wasn’t sure if facing Jim and his camera or dealing with an oncoming train was a worse fate.  He managed to scamper away from both of us.

Mountain goats strolled around various places, including the side of highways.

Elk are reasonably comfortable around people.  We saw lots of females and young, but no adult males.  One of the females had a bird riding around on her back.  It was there for at least 10 minutes.

At the edge of town, a mule deer climbed along the top of a stone embankment, just a few feet from the few cars that passed that spot.

Perched atop the cupola of a business in town, a raven seemed to be yelling the message “shop here, shop here”.

When we ventured to our first lake, Lake Annette, we saw magnificent loons and ducks breaking the surface of the smooth lake.

One part of the trail around Lake Annette was closed because there was a pair of eagles nesting who had a chick.  The chick was very camera shy, though.  Every time he popped his head up, Jim would line up his camera at its longest lens setting and the chick would duck (no, it’s an eagle, not a duck, Jim).

When we first approached the lake, Jim insisted that Ardith stop the car.  She reluctantly did so, and he got the picture of a fisherman that he glimpsed from the road.

Jim enjoyed the smells of the forest; Ardith’s sinuses were stuffed up and she couldn’t appreciate it.  His sniffing reverie was interrupted by horses coming along the path where he was dawdling.  There were separate paths for horses and hikers and he had strayed.

The lake itself was a typically splendid mountain lake.  We were both in awe and often just stopped to admire.

The lake wasn’t just for hiking and fishing, families were enjoying the beach.

There were a number of great wildflowers along our hike around the lake.

Our next hike, to Five Lakes, also showed other great wildflowers to us.

The trail leading to Five Lakes climbs up and down a few times.  Ardith wasn’t sure if she could / should do it.  She persevered and was extremely glad she did.  Each of the lakes had their own color, partly due to the differing mineral content, partly to the way the sun hits the lakes.

Even though the lakes were never close to a road, there were a few places with rental rowboats.  You could get a key from a shop in town. 

Jim’s camera has settings to take black and white or sepia pictures.  He thought this would be a good place to show the contrast between them and color pictures.

One late afternoon, Ardith needed a break and Jim took advantage of the time to venture to Maligne (ma leen) Canyon.  There is an easy hike here and a more strenuous one, so Jim chose the latter.  There are 6 bridges that cross the canyon and they are numbered rather than named. 

The head of the more challenging trail is at bridge 5.  The trail crosses a broad stream there that flows very rapidly, but there are few rocks there to cause rapids.  Steep, high slopes await after crossing the bridge.

As you proceed upstream, the gap narrows.  Roaring rapids appear. 

You get to a place where the gap is so narrow, you can only see the bottom at a few brief places along the trail.

There are many places along the trail with fences between it and the canyon.  Early on, they were mainly for handholds where climbing and to note areas that might have a bit of danger. Jim crossed one of these to get one of the shots above.  In other places, the message was “don’t even think about going on the other side of this fence”.  These were marked with chain link supplementing the steel rails.

There were some nice falls between bridges 1 and 2 where the easy trail went through the canyon.

Jim had spent loads of time photographing and just absorbing the splendors of the canyon.  When he got to bridge 1, he realized that he had been on the trail for about two and a half hours.  The trail was supposed to take one hour.  He realized that Ardith would be thinking about dinner, so he decided to take the trail back that appeared to be shorter.  That trail stayed away from the canyon.  Jim thought it would be fairly flat, but about a tenth of a mile after the trails split, there was a steep climb up.  He couldn’t see the canyon or the other trail until the after shorter one came back down.

When the trail came down, it joined another.  Jim had been on lots of trails in the park before this point.  At every trail junction there had been a map with a clear dot indicating “you are here”.  There was none here.  Jim chose a path and after about 15 minutes, he decided it was the wrong way.  There was actually a big plus to this.  On his way up the canyon, there was a sign explaining that the stream though the canyon was being continually fed as it went downstream.  There were a few falls coming down.

The main source of new water came from a huge system of underwater caverns that flowed from a lake that was about 10 miles away.  There were a few outlets on the other side as Jim made his way up the canyon, but they were far away from him.

As he walked the wrong way on the trail, he came to a place where there was just soil on one side of the trail.  The other side had water gushing out.  The outflow expanded to be more than 15 feet wide where it joined the main stream.

He did find his way back with no problems.

We had some great dinners, starting with the one mentioned in an earlier blog entry at Papa George’s.   We both had excellent prime ribs at the Prime Rib Village.  Jim neglected to take pictures.  We were in the second story Villa Caruso early and got the best seats in the house, overlooking the main intersection in town.  

They had a lot of game meats on the menu and Jim is usually game for something different.  He had a wild boar chop.  It was a lot more flavorful than a pork chop, but thicker and chewier.  The forest mushroom sauce that came with this was the best mushroom dish he has had since he was in rural Russia in a village where people regularly went into the woods to find wild mushrooms for export.  Ardith loved her pork tenderloin with an apple, maple syrup and pecan sauce.  They also did a great job with the veggies, cooked just right.  Ardith really liked their fruit ciders.

We also had dinner at the L&W Family Restaurant.  Its prices were slightly less than other restaurants in town (meaning not cheap).  They started their meal with deep fried zucchini sticks – a nice appetizer. Jim had a donair sandwich with a Greek salad.  The salad was superb, the donair less tasty than others he has had.  Ardith enjoyed a veal cutlet with fresh mushrooms.  Dinner was tasty but there was an inconsolable screaming child who was about 3 or 4 years old.  The parents tried to quiet him, but didn’t remove him.  He quieted down shortly before we left.

One of 3 ways into the town of Jasper crosses the railroad just a half block off the main street.  There are often long trains passing by.  Wise motorists know to immediately make U-turns, but some people waited for as much as 20 minutes in our observations.

Pedestrians and bicyclists can take advantage of a tunnel that was built about 3 years ago.  Cyclists enjoy zooming down the hill into the tunnel.

Jasper isn’t just about nature and eating and shopping (we didn’t do any of that).  There are also a few fun things to look at.  To Jim’s warped mind, the people of town don’t regard dogs as pets.

At the top of the list of things to do in Jasper that Ardith had prepared before leaving home was to take the aerial tramway.  The upper station lured to us from town, looking like a secret laboratory from below.

Each day we would watch the sky and head toward the base of the tramway.  Each day as we approached, clouds would come rolling in and we would return to town or another activity.  On our last full day there, Jim returned from his early morning activity and announced ”the sky is clear, lets go up”, so they quickly got themselves read and headed to the base station.  Their timing was fairly good.  They had about a ten minute wait to buy tickets, then another 20 minutes until their scheduled “flight” up the mountains.  Lots of people came after they did.

Each "flight" on the way up was pre-booked and was well filled.

The instant he got out of the gondola that transported us, Jim zipped over to a railing to taked pictures.

There was an optional climb up from the top station.  About half the people opted for that.  We split 50-50 with Ardith being sane and sticking to the pavilion level, enjoying the views and looking for wildlife.  She tried her best to see what Jim was up to.  When he got to the summit she could see, he stopped to take a shot looking down to where Ardith was.

He then ducked around to the side to attempt a good picture of 5 lakes that we had hiked earlier and also one of Lake Beauvert, one of Jim's early morning subjects..  It was a bit hazy, but the best it has been the whole time we were here.

There was a rock protruding from the summit that a lot of people climbed and posed for pictures.

There was a second summit that was hard to see from the pavilion and Jim decided to hike to there.  Only a small number of people made it to there.  Jim had been listening to languages and accents of people around Jasper and especially on the trip up the mountain.  More than half the people didn’t speak English as their native language.  At the top of the second summit, about half of people spoke German.  He only heard one group of Americans out of about 30 groups of people that were on the path to that level. 

He was alone on the second summit for about five minutes and decided to attempt a 360° panorama photo.  When he got to his last shot, a family appeared having a race to the summit where he stood.

The camera apparently didn't record one of the picture in the full panorama, so here are a few excerpts:

When Jim got back down to the pavilion, he found a very concerned wife.  He had been gone a lot longer than a lot of people and was unsure of his status.  She had tracked him up to the first summit, but couldn’t see the second one.  After a while, she was consoled by a nice, simple lunch in the restaurant there.