Angel Glacier, Mt. Robson, Valemount, Columbia Icefields, Lake Louise (posted from ‘The Bison’ parking lot in downtown Banff, AB)
(this post covers 25-28 August)

Monday, 28 August-
At 0300 this morning we were awakened by ice-thunder—a massive keeRACK-rumble-bumble-jumble-stumble as it echoed down the valley. Of course we couldn’t see a thing—there are no pole lights on the ice-field. We did have a pretty good star-glow, however. We could see a pale glow coming off the glacial lake at the toe of the Athabasca Glacier.
We also happen to be below the Snow-Dome Glacier, which is interesting to geographers since its waters drain to three different oceans. Some of the waters drain down to the Arctic Ocean via the Athabasca River; we’ve been following the Athabasca upstream as we’ve driven down the Canadian Rockies from Hinton. Some of its waters drain to the Atlantic Ocean via the North Saskatchewan River, the river we followed in Saskatoon. And some of the Snow-Dome Glacier’s waters drain to the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River.
After breakfast we drove south down the Icefield Parkway toward Saskatchewan Crossing. Our first significant stop was Peyto Lake, where we walked the trails through the meadows at Bow Mountain summit. We finally saw some Indian Paintbrush, a flower we liked on a previous trip west but hadn’t seen until today.
After lunch in the parking lot, we drove on to Lake Louise. We took the obligatory walk through the grand hotel but the best thing about it is the view across the lake. Though it was a Monday at the end of summer, the public parking lot was nearly full. We heard many German speakers and many middle-Eastern and Indian tourists but the greatest percentage of foreign tourists are Japanese.
After Lake Louise we continued south on the Bow Valley Parkway and soon came to a cluster of cars blocking the road—they were stopped for a black bear who was contentedly munching bear-berries and ignoring everything else around him/her.
We stopped our travels for the day at Protection Mountain campground. Labashi cooked up one of her terrific one-pot medleys. Cost at the campground tonight is $18.80 CDN. We are in a large campground and there’s nobody in sight. The trees around us are all straight-as-an-arrow lodgepole pines and the ground between them is covered in a thick carpet of pine needles and moss. The weather continues pleasant though rain is called for in the next two days. We have very few bugs so it’s very pleasant to sit outside and type away at the blog tonight. I have to wrap it up—it’s getting dark…

Sunday, 27 August-
This morning we woke to a 43-degree morning in Mt Robson Meadows campground. This one is a provincial park and, unlike most campgrounds in Jasper National Park, this one has showers, albeit in an unheated building. Fortunately, they were very hot showers so the cool morning isn’t as bad as it sounds.
The first order of the day was to visit the salmon falls at Rearguard Falls, a roadside rest along the Yellowhead about ten minutes west of our campground. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any salmon in the impressive falls. We saw several backs of salmon as they fed in the pool below the falls and Labashi saw one salmon jump out in the pool but nothing at the falls. However, I talked with an Australian couple who said they had been here yesterday and had seen salmon. They asked if we had been to Valemount to the spawning pool. We hadn’t heard of it but went on their recommendation. The spawning pool is a section of the Swift Creek just outside of town where Chinook salmon spawn after an 800-mile (!!!!) swim from the Pacific. This place represents the farthest distance swum by any salmon. Only 15 per cent of the Chinook starting the trip make it this far. When we first arrived we didn’t see any salmon but that was just because we weren’t looking close enough. Within a few minutes we saw a tail out of the water a bit downstream—then another one. The two salmon were easily over 30 inches long and were very slowly working their way upstream. We waited on a bridge crossing the stream some 20 yards above them and they made some progress but then fell back. They would try again, every once in a while thrashing but not making much headway. We walked downstream another ten yards and saw two more fish working their way up. They are truly magnificent creatures.
We then drove into Valemount and stopped at a coffee shop. I thought it great good luck to have found a coffee shop open on a Sunday in such a small town but then learned I couldn’t order the drink I wanted because they had no ice--- they had run out. But WE had ice! So Labashi talked them into making my mochaccino with ice from our cooler. On the way into town I had also seen that they have a car wash. After 29 days on the road, it was time for Mocha Joe’s bath. But we did have a little problem--- the wand-wash coin machine said only “This machine takes only loonies or toonies”. Fortunately, we knew from our other Canadian trips that the Canadian one-dollar coin is called a loonie because it has the image of a loon on it. And then it follows (in the car-wash-coin-machine context, anyway) that a ‘toonie’ must be the Canadian two-dollar coin. And that was indeed the case. Ah the adventure of living in a foreign land!
After the car-wash we stopped in the local park and had lunch, then headed back east toward Alberta. It had been a great little detour into B.C…. absolutely wonderful mountain scenery, glacial lakes, glacial rivers, one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve been in so far and good roads the whole way.
After crossing back into Alberta, we drove into Jasper to look for an RV roll-up hose. It seems Canada does not believe in having hoses at their dump-stations. But no luck there, so we just gassed up and iced-up and headed south.
We stopped at Athabasca Falls next. Two weeks ago, an Italian tourist and his girlfriend had climbed through the fence around the falls to take some pictures. The tourist got too close to the falls and slipped on wet rocks and tumbled into the falls to his death. So it was with amazement today that we saw tourists climbing through the fence, some with little children or dogs, and venturing out to within feet of the plunge over the falls. In their defense, both the fence and the warning signs should be improved. But it astounds me that people would take their children so close to obvious danger.
We continued south and soon came to a sign warning that there could be mountain sheep on the roads. And before long, there they were, a small herd of eight or ten of them… right in the middle of a road-side pulloff! There were tourists around three sides of them, taking pictures and reaching out to them. The only side open to them was the highway where cars were speeding by. Not good.
We continued south to the Columbia icefields and a highlight of the day. We took a trip by ‘Ice Explorer’ onto the Athabasca Glacier. An ‘Ice Explorer’ is an over-sized combination bus and ATV. The body is much like a bus but it sits very high on earth-mover-style tires about three feet wide and six feet high. We bought our tickets at the visitor’s center and then boarded a conventional bus for a ten-minute ride to the Ice Explorer terminal. There we boarded an Ice Explorer for a two kilometer ride on the glacier. We first descended a scarily-steep ramp down what a gravel road. After we leveled out, our driver asked if anyone thought we were on the glacier yet—which of course was a loaded question. We appeared to be on a stone-and-rock road but learned that there was 300 feet of ice under us already. We then went through a pool of water about three feet deep which is there to wash the gravel off the tires before going onto the glacier. Then we started a slow climb up the glacier as the driver explain the sights around us, including the glaciers on the mountains above us as well as the glacier under our tires.
We came to a halt about a hundred yards before the headwall at ‘the turnaround’, where we were on 1000 feet of ice. There we got out of the Ice Explorer to walk around on the glacier, to take pictures, and to taste the glacier melt-water. A short time before, I had seen a thermometer reading 60 degrees in the shade of the boarding platform at the Ice Explorer terminal. On the ice, we had a stiff breeze blowing down the glacier and I’d guess the air temperature was in the high-thirties if not colder. We had twenty minutes to wander around but didn’t take all the time available. Labashi and I were last to re-board and there were still five minutes left.
I had been a little reluctant to take the trip because we could see most of what went on from the parking lot of the visitor’s center. We could see across the valley to the glaciers and we could see (via binoculars) the Ice Explorers venturing out onto Athabasca Glacier and people getting out and walking around. But in the end we wanted to experience it for ourselves and took the chance that it would be worth the $35 per person—and it was well worth-while.
After our ice-adventure, we returned to the visitor’s center and toured its nice little museum. We saw a short silent film of a 1925 horse-packing expedition to the glacier. And today all we had to do was drive up to the visitor center and buy a ride on the Ice Explorer.
This afternoon we had learned we could park overnight in the visitor center’s RV parking lot for $9 CDN --- what a deal! As I wrote this blog entry I could see the sun setting on five glaciers out Mocha Joe’s windows.

Saturday, 26 August-
This morning was clean-up day. We had a late start today because our fancy meals had kept us awake late last night. We’re just not used to the rich food, I suppose. In my case, I suspect it was the chocolate martinis. Anyway, when we finally did get up around 0900 we cleaned out the van, took care of porta-pottie, and went into town for some ice. Then we headed west on the Yellowhead Highway. The term ‘Yellowhead’ comes from an early fur-trader in the area, Pierre Bostonais, who was known as ‘Tete Jaune’, or, literally, ‘yellow head’ for his distinctive blond hair. Though we hadn’t really planning to head out that way, I wanted to see the Yellowhead Pass since I learned it’s the lowest pass through the Rocky Mountains and its crossing of the Continental Divide coincides with crossing into British Columbia and into the Pacific Time Zone. The trip was an easy one. We were in British Columbia within a half-hour and down the Yellowhead Pass to Mt Robson within an hour. Mount Robson is spectacular—it’s the highest peak of the Canadian Rockies and it’s massive and snow-covered. We stopped at the Visitor Center where the view of Mt Robson is fantastic. I had read a recommendation to take the Berg Trail from near the visitor’s center so asked about it at the Center. We saw a regional park campground nearby so we checked in there and selected a camping spot then drove to the trailhead. We spent all afternoon and evening hiking to the far end of Kinney Lake via the Berg Trail and then returning (approximately 8 miles total). The trail was great--- it followed the Robson River, a spectacular, rushing, roaring, blue-glacier-melt river coming out of Kinney Lake. Above us the whole time were the snow-covered peaks of Mt Robson and our trail just took us closer and closer to the mountain until we started running out of daylight and had to head back. Absolutely awesome.
Back in the Mt Robson Meadows campground Labashi cooked up ravioli experimentali to help us recover from our walk. It too was awesome.


Friday, 25 August-
Last night was our coldest yet, 34-degrees, so we fired up the Buddy heater to get dressed and have breakfast this morning. We started early in order to drive up to Mount Edith Cavell and see the Angel Glacier. The area is very popular even though it lies five miles back a twisty and pot-holed road. We had seen recommendations that visitors should either go before 1000 or after 1500 because of the narrow road and the relatively small parking lot. We were on the access road by 0830 and had it to ourselves. At the parking lot, though, there were already a dozen cars and a mini-bus from the Adventure Center had just arrived. We put on winter hats, coats, and gloves and started hiking the ‘Path of the Glacier’ trail since it takes you to the toe of the hanging glacier called Angel Glacier, below which is Cavell Glacier and a large pool of glacier-melt from both of them. Angel Glacier is so-called because it has an angel’s shape. Above you and out of sight is a very large ‘cirque’ or circular area into which snow falls and compresses into glacial ice. The glacier moves toward an opening and spills down a canyon in the wall of the opening forming a ‘hanging’ glacier (the body of the angel). The wings of the angel are formed by ice remaining high up on either side of the initial opening of the canyon, making a very striking form. The glacial ice is covered with snow but in many places you can see the light blue of the pure glacial ice.
Our hike took us to the large pond at the base of the mountain. Waterfalls cascaded down the mountain wall, emanating from under the hanging glacier and making quite a loud rush and though out the valley. At the far edge of the pond is Cavell Glacier, calving small icebergs into the pond. Shortly after we arrived we heard a sound like a dynamite blast. We couldn’t immediately place it but later talked with another tourist who had seen the Cavell Glacier calve off a piece in the far corner of the pond. It had sent a ripple across the pond even though the pond had a light coating of ice. The tourist said the ripples caused ripples in the ice sheet and caused a tinkling sound as the light ice coating rippled. High up on the left was another glacier, this one called ‘Ghost Glacier’ and it looked like it would fall from the mountain at any time. As we sat amazed by this little valley we were in, we noticed that there was a cloud forming at the top of the mountain. We couldn’t tell if it was snow (which seemed unlikely) or condensing moisture droplets. In any case, we could also see beautiful falls near the top. The falls appeared to be snow drifting down and funneled into the valleys in the rock face and cascading over the rock. These were very odd; they would start and stop. We’d see a beautiful cascade which would appear to rush down the rock valley and shoot out into the air only to disappear as if it evaporated. A few minutes later, another rush would happen. These appeared to be tied to the fact that the sun was shining on that upper reaches of the mountain. We later returned when this area was in shade and the cascades had stopped.
As you can imagine, we were endlessly fascinated by the glacier and the little valley we were in. The floor of the valley was a moraine that in the 50’s had been covered by part of the glacier. Now, there are small coniferous trees growing there, most under two feet tall.
We kept hearing the ice crack but saw little evidence of it. The sound itself was spooky and every time the louder cracks happened you could look around and see that all of us tourists were paying very close attention for we were so close to the glacier that it looked like it would be very easy for a big chunk to come down on us. I did happen to see a small ice fall after one of the ‘ice-thunder’ booms. It was at the lower end of the angel’s body but only consisted of a few chunks of ice rolling down a short distance.
After two and a half hours there, we walked back to the van and had lunch in the parking lot. By that time the lot was completely full and people were circling for parking spots. But we weren’t ready to leave. We had a quick lunch and headed back up to the glacier, this time up the moraine trail, which gave us a slightly different perspective. And we also saw that we had been very lucky to get an early start since the light had changed dramatically. We had seen the glacier in full sunlight but already the left wing and the body of the angel were the mountain’s shadow.
After such a great start to the day, we then drove into Jasper and hooked up to the internet to do our email and to upload my blog entry. At the campground I had asked if there were any free wi-fi connections in town and the clerk told me to try the hospital or the old-folks home. So we tried the hospital parking lot and though we had a fairly slow connection, we were able to get the job done.
After a couple hours of internet work, we took a walk through town. Jasper is a nice little resort town and we enjoyed seeing it. Late in the day we stopped at an Earl’s restaurant, thinking we’d have a drink and maybe a snack. We had drinks and had their wonderful herb bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and we were hooked. Labashi then went for the cedar-plank salmon and I had a terrific chicken curry. So much for eating in the van tonight!
After our meal, we took a walk into Maligne Canyon at Bridge 5. It was very pretty walking along the river that had carved the limestone canyon but we didn’t last long.
We then drove back to Wabasso campground, the same one we had been in last night.