Thursday, June 9 – What a day this was – best weather, scenery, wildlife, and food so far. After a good breakfast at our lodge, we packed up and headed north on the Trans-Canadian Highway to Lake Louise. The weather overnight turned beautiful with cool, clear skies and plenty of sunshine. As we exited the highway at Lake Louise there was a large portable flashing sign saying “Warning – bears sighted in the area” in English and French. We had our hopes up.
We drove to a parking lot and hiked a short distance to the beautiful scene of Lake Louise with snow covered mountains reflected like a mirror. There was still ice floating on the lake in some places. This viewing area was just behind the grand Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise so we entered the hotel to have a look around. Then back to the lake where three teenagers decided to amuse the crowd by taking a dip in the icy lake. They didn’t stay long.
We drove the short distance to Moraine Lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks. No trip is complete to Lake Louise without a visit to this beautiful lake as well. It had more ice on it and because the ice hadn’t melted much at all, the lake level was low. We picked up a sandwich for a picnic later on and headed back to the main highway. We didn’t see any bears here but just wait.
Just outside the town of Lake Louise we took highway 93 better known as the Icefields Parkway. Our guide book (which is American) called this “the most beautiful drive in North America” and we would have to agree that it is the nicest we ever drove. Our brochure says the parkway passes within viewing distance of seven Icefields, which are large upland glaciers, and about 25 smaller glaciers that are still notable.
We made several stops and took most of the day driving the parkway to Jasper. Our first stop was at the Crowfoot Glacier so named because it used to have three long crow’s toes but in the past few decades that has melted down to two toes. We stopped at Bow Lake mostly covered with icy patches. We crossed over Howse Pass and viewed Bridal Veil Falls from our car. At Sunwapta Pass we stopped to photograph the sign where Banff National Park ends and Jasper National Park begins. At this point, depending where the snow and rain fall, water flows into three oceans – the Pacific, Atlantic or Arctic Oceans.
Next we stopped at the Icefield Centre, a park exhibit and information point. Here we could see the huge Columbia Icefield, the largest Icefield south of Alaska. Across the highway was the Athabasca glacier which, in the early 1900s, used to extend to the parking lot of the Icefield Centre. As we continued along the highway a short distance we saw stopped cars and campers. The attraction was a small group of big horn sheep with some babies. Rita got a great photo of a ram resting up on a rock. Higher up we saw a white mountain goat but our zoom lens wasn’t powerful enough to capture his photo.
We continued north, making stops to hike to Sunwapta Falls and Athabasca Falls with roaring plumes of water. We were nearing the town of Jasper and a little discouraged we had not seen any bears when I spotted a black mass across the highway. I stopped the car and just had time to photograph a big black bear crossing the highway behind us. He disappeared into the woods, reminding me of the joke about what a bear does in the woods but I couldn’t work that into this family blog. Now, continuously on the lookout, every dark stump or clump of bushes resembled a bear in our minds. A little further down the parkway we saw a small group of cars and campers alongside the road and people out of their cars with tripods and cameras. We stopped, too, and were lucky to see a mama grizzly bear with her two small cubs. Again, our zoom didn’t do justice to the scene but we used our binoculars to get a good view of them.
Soon we came to the pretty little town of Jasper where we checked into our motel. We drove into town and had a great dinner at Andy’s Bistro. Andy is Swiss and cooks in the slow food (as opposed to fast food) method with fresh vegetables and great preparation. We also had a British Columbia chardonnay with the meal that tasted fine. What an end to a great day.
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