As we left Golden and entered the Kicking Horse River canyon three bighorn sheep grazing along the roadside hardly gave us notice. (And I had laughed when I saw the caution road sign for bighorn sheep crossing not a quarter-mile before we saw the sheep.) The Kicking Horse River is locally famous for raft rides on it's powder-blue waters. (Most of the rivers in this area are chalky blue in color from the rock flour left behind by glaciers.) The rapids I could see from the road certainly seemed to warrant the river's name, and I can well imagine that the raft rides are a hoot. (Gi's put the kabosh on that idea, though -- too cold.)
Banff and Jasper National Parks are jsut the two most famous of a cluster of Canadian National Parks in this area. The first park we entered was Yoho which, among other things, is famous as the home of the Burgess Shales. (Famous to geologists and fossil-hunters that is. These shales, which are found up on some mountian peaks in this park, contain the best preserved specimens of some of the oldest animal fossils known.) After stopping to buy our pass for stopping in the parks and driving the Icefield Parkway, we continued on to the junction of Can1 with AB93 (the parkway).
We had planned for a lot of stopped to enjoy the scenery along the parkway, and out first break came in the shadow of Bow and Crowfoot Mountains, where I shot some of the Indian Paintbrush that was in bloom all along the route. Even though traffic was steady in both directions, it was lighter than I expected, perhaps because it was the Sunday after a long holiday weekend and folks were heading home by faster routes. Anyway, it meant that we enjoyed lots of open road with spectacular scenery.
The next stop came quickly as we stopped to get a close look at Crowfoot Glacier and the ice caves on the glacier face. A family of northern shrikes were obviously regulars at this pull-out, no doubt enjoying lots of handouts from the tourists.
We cruised on past Bow Lake -- although Gi snapped a nice shot from the back seat -- but we had to stop at Peyto Lake to marvel at a whole lake full of that powder-blue water with Mount Patterson towering in the background.
I had to stop and top up the gas tank at the AB11 junction since since the Crossroads station has the only gas between Banff and Jasper. What a racket, though. "Full service" means a guy comes and hands you a ticket after you've pumped your gas, and you get the priviledge of paying about $5/gallon. That's why I tanked up before entering the park, but I still got the shaft for about $10.
From there it was pretty much a straight shot along the Saskatchewan River, which has that typical multi=threaded channel that characterizes young glacial rivers. There was a big switchback heading up to Sunwapta Pass where Gi missed a picture of a mountain goat standing next to the road, but at a pullout a little further along we got some great shots of the road we had traveled.
Just above Sunwapta pass is the Columbia Icefield and the Icefield Center. We took some obligatory glacier shots (and some not-so-obligatory). We also took a ride through the terminal moraine fields and noted from the markers that the front of the largest glacier had retreated close to a mile in the past 100 years, and is was pretty clear that the retreat had been accelerating of late.
After a quick pit stop at Sunwapta Resort and a photo op under the gaze of Mt. Christie, we pulled over walk around Athabasca Falls, where the Athabasca River has carved a deep gorge from an upper glacial valley into a lower one. There are a number of interesting that follow old watercourses and allow you to see jsut how the rocks were carved by water over time. We got quite a few good pictures, including a short movie of the falls, which I'm going to try and include here.
It's about 20 miles from Athabasca Falls to Jasper and since we could see threatening clouds in that direction I decided to forego a more leisurely drive along the older 93A route. Rain was threatening as we pulled into town but the elk, which seemed to be everywhere at this point, didn't seem to mind.
As we left Golden and entered the Kicking Horse River canyon three bighorn sheep grazing along the roadside hardly gave us notice. (And I had laughed when I saw the caution road sign for bighorn sheep crossing not a quarter-mile before we saw the sheep.) The Kicking Horse River is locally famous for raft rides on it's powder-blue waters. (Most of the rivers in this area are chalky blue in color from the rock flour left behind by glaciers.) The rapids I could see from the road certainly seemed to warrant the river's name, and I can well imagine that the raft rides are a hoot. (Gi's put the kabosh on that idea, though -- too cold.)
Banff and Jasper National Parks are jsut the two most famous of a cluster of Canadian National Parks in this area. The first park we entered was Yoho which, among other things, is famous as the home of the Burgess Shales. (Famous to geologists and fossil-hunters that is. These shales, which are found up on some mountian peaks in this park, contain the best preserved specimens of some of the oldest animal fossils known.) After stopping to buy our pass for stopping in the parks and driving the Icefield Parkway, we continued on to the junction of Can1 with AB93 (the parkway).
We had planned for a lot of stopped to enjoy the scenery along the parkway, and out first break came in the shadow of Bow and Crowfoot Mountains, where I shot some of the Indian Paintbrush that was in bloom all along the route. Even though traffic was steady in both directions, it was lighter than I expected, perhaps because it was the Sunday after a long holiday weekend and folks were heading home by faster routes. Anyway, it meant that we enjoyed lots of open road with spectacular scenery. 
The next stop came quickly as we stopped to get a close look at Crowfoot Glacier and the ice caves on the glacier face. A family of northern shrikes were obviously regulars at this pull-out, no doubt enjoying lots of handouts from the tourists.
We cruised on past Bow Lake -- although Gi snapped a nice shot from the back seat -- but we had to stop at Peyto Lake to marvel at a whole lake full of that powder-blue water with Mount Patterson towering in the background.
I had to stop and top up the gas tank at the AB11 junction since since the Crossroads station has the only gas between Banff and Jasper. What a racket, though. "Full service" means a guy comes and hands you a ticket after you've pumped your gas, and you get the priviledge of paying about $5/gallon. That's why I tanked up before entering the park, but I still got the shaft for about $10.
From there it was pretty much a straight shot along the Saskatchewan River, which has that typical multi=threaded channel that characterizes young glacial rivers. There was a big switchback heading up to Sunwapta Pass where Gi missed a picture of a mountain goat standing next to the road, but at a pullout a little further along we got some great shots of the road we had traveled.
Just above Sunwapta pass is the Columbia Icefield and the Icefield Center. We took some obligatory glacier shots (and some not-so-obligatory). We also took a ride through the terminal moraine fields and noted from the markers that the front of the largest glacier had retreated close to a mile in the past 100 years, and is was pretty clear that the retreat had been accelerating of late.
After a quick pit stop at Sunwapta Resort and a photo op under the gaze of Mt. Christie, we pulled over walk around Athabasca Falls, where the Athabasca River has carved a deep gorge from an upper glacial valley into a lower one. There are a number of interesting that follow old watercourses and allow you to see jsut how the rocks were carved by water over time. We got quite a few good pictures, including a short movie of the falls, which I'm going to try and include here.
It's about 20 miles from Athabasca Falls to Jasper and since we could see threatening clouds in that direction I decided to forego a more leisurely drive along the older 93A route. Rain was threatening as we pulled into town but the elk, which seemed to be everywhere at this point, didn't seem to mind.
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