There was a fair amount of driving involved. The Athabasca Glacier is 100 km past Lake Louise, which is already slightly over an hour away from Canmore. I dictated we leave at 8am so we could have some flex time and still be back by dinner. Valerie and Ben begrudgingly agreed.
We were actually only about ten minutes off of that time - the closest we've been all trip. Good thing it's a vacation and no one is actually timing us.
In our "efficient" leaving, we also left:
- Sunscreen
- Bugspray
- Bear spray
- First aid kit
- Hand sanitizer
There was a coffee stop in Banff, then we were on the road. Our first stop was Bow Lake and the Num-Ti-Jah Lodge. We walked by the lake, which had "waves," unlike the rest of the glacier lakes we've visited in the last few days. It wasn't bigger than Lake Louise, but I guess it was less sheltered, and the wind sweeping through the carved valley was stirring up some current. We could see our "first" glacier, Crowfoot, hovering over the water.
We popped in the lodge, admiring the furs and postcards. (I bought some of the latter, not the former.)
Next up the parkway was a mini-hike up to the viewpoint over Peyto Lake (it's pronounced Pee-toe) at Bow Summit. It wasn't quite a walk, because it was pretty steeply uphill, but it was paved the whole way, with a boardwalk overlook. It was another glacier - the Peyto Glacier that fed the lake, named after a mountain man the "didn't care what anyone thought." I looked him up, and he was a trail guide and one of the first park rangers, but had a style of his own. The lake was named after him because the typical campsite by Bow Lake got too crowded, so he'd hide out at his own lake. He also wore a sombrero at a rankish angle.
After that exhausting uphill/downhill, we had plenty of time to rest as we passed the Waterfowl Lakes, crossed over the Saskatchewan River, and glanced at the Weeping Wall (with intentions to go back to the last one on our way back south).
We were originally going to just drive past Bridal Veil Falls too, but about 100 yards before the turnoff, a lone mountain goat was eating five feet from the road. We pulled over, saw enough of the waterfall, then watched the goat for a bit.
It was making its way up the road, a few feet every few minutes. "Hey," I thought to myself, "Aren't goats herd animals?" And, staring up the rock face on the other side of the road, I spotted another goat and a kid (baby goat). We watched them, then as we were going to turn and set off again, those that we spotted started moving - along with another goat and another two more kids that we missed the first time.
They wandered into and then across the road. If you are really good, you might see the three on the hillside to the right, and the two that are left of the RV just past the road.
We continued to the Icefield Center. When we checked online yesterday, there were plenty of tickets for the 90-minute "CAT" tours of Athabasca Glacier, since it left every 15. After using a restroom with running water (small successes!), we were told that they weren't selling day-of tickets. We had lunch, confusedly, because the two different UK families we sat with both had tickets and intentions of going out on the ice, until we learned they were honoring previously purchased ticket. Ticket sales were being delayed because of some "large incident" that the employee didn't know more details about.
So, bad news - our big adventure on the icefield (though technically just a glacier - the icefields are beyond the crest) was not going to happen, But, we also didn't spend $55 a person to go walk on some super-compacted ice. We did walk up as close as the public is allowed to Athabasca. The temperature dropped ten degrees as we walked up then across the scree to the boundaries of safety.
Not to be thwarted, we continued up the Icefield Parkway to hit two more stops before turning around: Tangle Falls and the Stutfield glacier.
The falls were very pretty. No mountain or bighorn sheep, though, despite the fact the guidebook told us to look. The glacier was another geologically grand piece of the icefield puzzle.
So, about this icefield - it is cradled in the mountains, with at least half a dozen glaciers fingering off through the passes in between the peaks. It is a hydrological apex - the runoff goes to multiple oceans. In this case, it is the Pacific, Atlantic via the Hudson Bay, AND the Arctic! There are only half a dozen like that in the world.
We decided that a roughly hour-long hike (it was around 2:30) would serve us, so we found Wilcox Pass. The "first viewpoint" was an hour round-trip. The entire trail was 8 km and 2-3 hours.
Well, we got a viewpoint at 3:30. A man showed us two mountaineers climbing one of the peaks that was covered in snow. There were cute red chairs to sit in. We had climbed uphill that entire 45 minutes. It would have been great to call it a day right there...
But there was this ridge the hikers were disappearing over as they continued walking along. "Maybe just to the ridge."
Do you know the song "The Bear Climbed Over the Mountain"? Bear climbs up, then sees anther mountain to climb.
That was similar to our experience. It wasn't like we were that tired, or that hungry, or that we had to be anywhere. It was the after each ridge was another one, and another one.
The ridges actually started blocking out the glaciers. The alpine meadows weren't quite the brilliance that Valerie was expecting. The river we were following was deep in a canyon, so not many good looks there either. It was really apparent that this hike wasn't our best when Ben bled not once, but twice - from a mosquito and from a "spiky" spruce (unlike a "friendly" fern). Not great, but not bad. Just kind of annoying.
We had our snack, did some dog-watching, then we started our hike back as all. Really, it was the red chairs that were the highlight of the tour.
Well, Lake Herbert turned into "lake with an H name." We stopped at Lake Helen - 6 km trail and blocked off because of bears. Odd. Then Lake Hector came up. It was probably Hector that I was thinking of. Except Hector just had a pull-off.... Lake Herbert!
Lake Herbert was calm, clear (no glacier flour), and relatively warm. A few families were taking advantage of the picnic spots around the parking lot and the warm day to go for a float and a dip.
We made it back in time for supper. The risotto that Deanne and I made a crazy ton of a couple nights ago was now being repurposed as fritters! I had to supervise and make sure there was enough oil to actually fry them, and not just saute them.
After dinner was hot-tubbing. After hot-tubbing was finishing the game of dominos from a few nights ago. (I won!) After dominos was the Perseids meteor shower! I saw about three big shooting stars, including the last which had a tail, it was so big. No one got run over, either, despite using the driveway to the place as a backyard.
Tomorrow is city stuff - or as "city" as you can get in towns like Banff and Canmore!
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