Abbey's Road

After getting everything done for my land purchase Friday morning, we drove up the Icefield Parkway. It’s about 230km with views of mountains, lakes and glaciers the whole way. You can see more glaciers from this parkway than any other road in the world. You can also see a fair amount of wildlife, even right from the road. I saw mountain goats, big horn sheep, caribou and a huge bull elk.

Thankfully, I haven’t met any bears or grizzlies on the trail yet. Jasper is more known for the wildlife and backcountry hiking and not so much for day hiking. But we managed to do a few nice hikes. On Saturday after getting Abbey out on a moderately easy trail I felt like I was coming down with a cold or something. I had planned on doing another hike but decided to go up to Miette Hot Springs instead. I figured I’d try and steam it out of me. Either it worked or it was just a 24 hour bug because the next day I felt much better. It was a long drive up to the hot springs and Abbey was stuck in the RV the whole time, so on the way back I pulled off and took her down to the river valley. In this particular spot the river was really a series of braided channels with gravel bars and mud flats all throughout. We saw a guy fly fishing and Abbey was doing some fishing of her own. She had a ball running through the water as usual.

Unfortunately, there have been wildfires in British Columbia so many of the days have been hazy from the smoke, which isn’t great for picture taking. But it’s better than rain and doesn’t hurt the hiking at all. It has actually been fairly warm with most days in the 70s and a couple in the low 80s. At night it cools off into the 40s so it’s great sleeping weather. We stayed 3 nights near Jasper townsite before heading back down the Icefield Parkway. On the way up we pretty much drove straight through with only a few stops for sightseeing. I found out later that at one of the places we did stop, Athabasca Falls, an Italian tourist died just four days earlier. He climbed over the rail, slipped and fell in just above the falls. On the way back down we spent a few nights and stretched it out a bit. We stopped at the Icefield Centre which has some nice exhibits on the glaciers and they let you go out on the edge of one. After reading about how dangerous it is and how you can easily fall into a crevasse and be crushed by the ice, I really don’t have a strong desire to go exploring on one. I tried to take Abbey on a short, but steep hike to get a closeup view of another glacier. She was doing fine until the wind picked up near the top. I was having a hard time getting her to continue when this couple saw her and started petting her. I had to explain to them that she is afraid of the wind because of the noise it makes, but I didn’t feel too funny because the woman had her head almost completely wrapped in a scarf. She said “I don’t like it either,” as she pointed to her head. To top things off we got a bunch of thunderstorms early the next morning so I barely got Abbey out that day. It wasn’t a great day as it rained off and on all day long. It was our first real washout. So the next morning I headed down to Lake Louise with hopes for better luck with Abbey and the weather.

Maligne Lake
Mt. Edith Cavell
Angel Glacier on Edith Cavell
Cavell Lake and Glacier
Sunwapta Falls
Waterfowl Lake
Can you see the wild animal?