Caroline and Jerry's Travel Log: Canadian National Parks (Part 2)

This post will cover the highways between the towns of Banff and Jasper.

We first take the Trans-Canada Highway for 34 miles from Banff to Lake Louise. After lunch at Lake Louise, we get off the Trans-Canada Highway and take Canada Highway 93 to Jasper, better known as The Icefields Parkway. It is akin to our Blue Ridge Parkway. It is 140 miles long, in a valley crammed between 2 mountain ranges. It gets over a million visitors a year.

It's main attraction are glaciers. There are 7 icefields (large upland glaciers) and 25 smaller glaciers.
The most prominent is the Columbia Icefield. It is close enough to the Parkway where you can get up close and personal to the Athabasca Glacier (photos below), either via a trail or guided tours on the glacier itself (guided tours on the glacier are definitely recommended; in the last few years several tourist have gone out alone, fallen into a crevasse and not made it out alive).

The other main attraction is all the mountains, which are apart of the Canadian Rockies. On an Icefields map, it lists about 80 named mountains. Of those, 67 are over 9,000': 13 between 9,000' & 10,000', 37 between 10,000' & 11,000' and 16 between 11,000' & 12,000'. Mt Columbia, at 12,303', is the tallest along the Parkway and 2nd tallest in the Canadian Rockies. The only thing that disappointed us was the lack of snow on the tallest peaks. When we were in Oregon a few years ago, we, went up to Mt. Hood, which is just over 11,000'. There is skiing and snowboarding year around. We did not see any mountains along the Parkway where it appeared those activities could have been done during the summer.

Even without that snow, the drive was spectacular and well worth it. Another good thing about it: we had to back track on the Parkway to get back to Montana. Many times a site looks different from another direction.

We had planned on staying in Jasper 2 days, but our accommodations were pretty bad, so we left the next day. Needless to say, we did not see anything in Jasper, hence no photos, except for downtown.

Johnson Lake with Mt Girouard (9,826') in the background

Lake Louise tourist area

Lake Louise (5,680') and in the background, Mt. Victoria (11,365)

Close-up of Mt. Victoria

Small waterfall on Bow River which goes through Lake Louise

Another view of the Bow River

Unknown mountain along the Bow River past Lake Louise

Jasper and Banff National Parks share a common border. Jasper NP is about 75 miles north of Lake Louise.

Athabasca Glacier, a part of the Columbia Icefield

Along the trail to the glacier

You can see the evidence of the glacier moving across this rock

There were several of these markers along the trail that showed where the glacier was at a particular time, in this case 1992

This is a close the trail gets to the glacier; maybe 200' away

Not all parts of the glacier are pretty and white, as you can see by this portion. The little chunk that broke off just right of center shows that it's part of the glacier and not just part of the mountain side.

In the middle of the photo is the visitor center, at least a mile away. Athabasca Glacier has retreated close to mile and a half in the past century

Kind of hard to determine which peaks are Hilda (10,032'), Athabasca (11,292') and Andromeda (11,318'). They are to the left of the Athabasca Glacier.

Bridal Veil Falls. It's at an elevation of 7,200' with the falls having a 1,200' drop.

The Weeping Wall. The elevation is probably about the same as Bridal Veil Falls, since they are not that far apart. The distance of the falls is about 980'.