June 16-21

Jasper is amazing- spectacular scenery- lakes, river, mountains, snow, glaciers, and wildlife. It was a long, long drive to get here…

We decided to just do the “Jasper” end of the Jasper/Banff parks. It is shoulder season here, yet already the campgrounds are full, the town of Jasper was hopping and Jasper is the quiet part of this 200+ mile park system. Banff is more commercial, closer to the US and bigger cities- so we will save it for the fall some year- perhaps along with Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

We rode the Skytram up Whistler’s Mountain for these awesome views:

That is the small town of Jasper in the pic on the right, between the river and the foothills.
We are finding much of Jasper “commercialized”- including within the park. The Columbia Icefields Visitor Center is large and recently remodeled- it has 2or 3 restaurants and several places to buy tickets for excursions, but no intrepretive center (a small one is under construction). Fortunately, we found a great Park Ranger to “grill” with all our questions about the glaciers!

The Columbia Icefield is on a triple continental divide and is actually several glaciers, three of which are the headwaters of three major rivers and each flows to a different ocean. The Athabasca Glacier flows to the Artic Ocean.
The Columbia Glacier flows to the US through WA and OR to the Pacific Ocean- we spent several weeks along the Salmon River last summer which also, eventually, flows into the Columbia.
The Saskatchewan Glacier which flows to the Hudson Bay, which flows to the Atlantic Ocean.
Clare had an “ah ha” moment when we got here. He could see where he and his grandparents walked on the glacier in 1965- only today the glacier has receded several 100 feet back. This pic is about here the glacier was then:

 

We visited to sets of falls- Athabasca and Sunwapta- great access, but that means lots of people- pushy people with their “selfie sticks” rushing to get the pic and then on to the next item on their checklist.

 

However, Lower Sunwapta Falls was 1km hike down, and very few people went that way- it was beautiful- spray from the falls drifted up to us and cooled us from the hot days we have had here.

And we saw a lot of wildlife- hoary marmot, elk, mountain goat, deer and bighorn sheep.