Icefields Parkway
Three days ago, Nzou, our copper-colored Ford F-250 elephant of a truck, wound us through one of the most beautiful places in the world. Unearthly, surprising, colorful, challenging, unpolished, unmerciful. Words and images do not do it justice. The Icefields Parkway must be experienced personally.
We woke on October 23 in Jasper where we met our fourth person from Australia over breakfast at the Wicked Cup. We were told that there is a British Commonwealth connection that enables young people from Australia to work for two years in Canada. Sounded like a great idea to us.
By eleven in the morning, we began the 233 kilometer (144 mile) Icefields Parkway from Jasper south to Lake Louise.
Mountains towered all around us in such strange shapes: knobs sticking out, humps and grooved ridges of rock. “What an amount of pressure it would have taken to create that!” Dan exclaimed more than once. He also said, “Just when you think you’ve seen the most beautiful mountains, something even more astonishing comes around the corner.”
We stopped at Athabasca Falls. Our dog Kiva made friends from all over the world while we marveled at the canyon shaped by glacial ice and deep teal water. The Athabasca Glacier once stretched almost sixty miles down the valley to where the falls are today.
Dan noted that you could see where glacial ice formed grooves in the mountains by the U shape and where glacial water did the sculpting by the V shape.
On our way to view the Athabasca Glacier, we were stopped by mountain goats licking salt right in the middle of a curve in the road. Unintimidated, they were in no hurry to move.
Athabasca Glacier is part of the Columbia Icefield, which lies along the Continental Divide. It is the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains of North America. Bitterly cold with blowing snow blinding my view, I pulled on my parka before venturing unseeingly toward the ice. Because of the white wind, there was only a glimpse of the over three mile long and just under a mile wide Athabasca Glacier. It is reported to be as thick as the Eiffel Tower is high.
The highest elevation for a public road in Canada is Bow Summit at 6,800 feet. There is a turn off for the teal lake that looks like a wolf, Peyto Lake, but we missed it because we were so enthralled by the towering mountains around us. Deeply green-blue, Bow Lake soon appeared right next to the highway.
The Australian waitress at the Wicked Cup told us that we would know when we were at what locals call “The Toilet Bowl.” Indeed, we did.
The entrance to Lake Louise is officially the end of the Icefields Parkway. There is a small town, but the highlight is the deep green Lake Louise itself and the Fairmont Chateau at its shore. People from all over the world stroll along the half-circle of the lake. Our Australian Shepherd, Kiva Louise, quickly became the international greeter of Lake Louise.
We continued to the charming Alberta town of Banff, forty minutes southeast, to stay the night.