Lake Louise to Jasper, Alberta

We wake up to the grandeur of the mountains…breathe deeply in and fill our lungs with it. They are tremendous.

We walk the Lakeshore Trail along Lake Louise in the crisp morning air and the warming sun, promising a beautiful day, (promise kept BTW). The lake is clogged with a significant amount of ice. We pity the busload of Japanese tourists who are missing its true- blue beauty.

Today we will drive the Columbia Icefields Parkway, known as the most beautiful road in the world. We won’t quibble with that description. Jim calls them “pointy mountains” and they are walls of rock with turrets and spires swirled and twirled with snow, one range after another, gray nearest to us and blue in the distance. The mountains just keep getting bigger and bigger.

At Bow Lake we stop to watch a helicopter flying low and ferrying logs one at a time from the roadside to a nearby lodge. Why?

We walk the Mistaya Canyon Trail, a 10 minute downhill path, (and I am reminded, coming back will be uphill), to where the Mistaya River’s water has found the path of least resistance cutting a deep twisting gorge into the bedrock and tumbled boulders.

We see some snow on the ground at higher elevations, but the road is bare and dry.

We are employing the Milepost for the first time today. It’s a travel planner that gives mile by mile descriptions of every point of interest and way point along the route. It will take us all the way to Alaska.
      

A flock of Canada geese is nestled into the North Saskatchewan River. We so often see them flying in their elongated Vees on their way to and fro. Have we actually caught them at home?

Bridal Veil Falls provides a backdrop for our lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches, (handy to have your stove trailing behind you). We were planning on turkey, but don’t seem to find it anywhere. Oops.

At the Icefields Center we stop to stare at what we can see of the 241 miles of ice fields. They have begun to recede but still impress.

We get a stunning surprise when we spot a large and healthy-looking grizzly bear in a roadside meadow. She is foraging in the grassy sward. This is a BIG bear and less than 20 feet away. She is quietly minding her own business while we stand (with the truck as a barrier) silently mesmerized with our heart-stopping view.

Later, we see a black bear in the woods. Interesting, but not thrilling after our grizzly sighting.

Athabasca Falls is only a 40 foot drop, but it drops into a short narrow canyon. The river starts out wide and calm, hurtles down the falls, through a twisting canyon and flows out smooth and wide again.

The only wildflowers today are stunted dandelions (do they count?) and wild strawberry.

We will overnight at Whistler’s Campground near Jasper. It’s filled with stands of aspen and is an area where wapiti have their calves, and it happens to be calving season. We’ll keep our eyes open.

Wildlife count: 2 flocks Canada geese, 1 black bear, 1 grizzly bear

Airstreams: 0

Miles: 144

Gratitudes:

PKB: The grizzly’s patient grazing so we could watch and watch

JMB: Glad the bear didn’t eat Pauline

Gin Score: J: 245 P:315

Grizzly Pal

Columbia Ice Fields