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Monday morning and we're off to Banff, but on the way we are in for 9 hours of Canadian delights, including the Sunwapta Valley, Athabasca falls, Columbia Ice field, where we take the Ice explorer onto the glacier, Peyto Lake, Bow Lake, Crowfoot Glacier, and finally Lake Louise and the Chateau Lodge. We are travelling through two National Parks, Jasper and into Banff and we will be travelling at the highest point of any Canadian highway! What a full day again, the photos will be a plenty again!
I thought I should start the day with a run. As I opened the door of the hotel it was fresh to say the least! The clouds were hanging so low in front of the mountains they look like cotton wool balls. The run woke me up, that's for sure...
8.15am: The coach arrived spot on time and we were greeted by our driver for the day, Jim. This guy turned out to be the font of all knowledge where Jasper and Banff National Parks and the Rockies is concerned. I don't normally like the constriction of a coach but he made it fantastic, with so much information, which, fortunately for you I am now going to share a tiny portion of it as I will already have forgotten so much! It was great to see lots of the people we met on the RM on our trip today and compare everything we have all done.
Question: How do you tell the difference without any doubt between a grizzly bear and a black bear? Answers on a postcard please, or I may put the answer at the bottom...
We are travelling today 177 miles from Jasper to Banff. About 5 minutes along the highway, Jim slowed the coach for us to see a grizzly bear having his breakfast. Tried to get his photo, he was hiding as best he could from us!
Our first stop was the Athabasca Falls. A huge waterfall with great shots of both the water and the glacier and erosion. We are travelling through 3 topogeographical regions today: Valley, Sub Alpine and Alpine. Peyto lake will be the highest point we visit. As we drove along we saw beautiful waterfalls such as Tangle falls, where the melting snow from the ice caps is still melting. We drove through Sunwapta pass and saw the fresh snow on the mountains from yesterday. We then reached the Columbia Icefields and Athabasca glacier. Another huge WOW here. The ice is up to 365m thick, it is deeper than the Eiffel tower, and the crevices can swallow one of the ice explorers that take you out onto the glacier. The ice explorers are not used anywhere else in the world and cost a mere one million! The tyres are 5 feet high and three feet wide. The sheer drop they take you down to get to the glacier is quite scary. You go through the ice explorer 'wheel wash' at the bottom before climbing up onto the glacier with clean tyres without any rocks; carrying rocks onto the glacier would mean it would melt more quickly. It was freezing cold obviously out on the glacier, the wind was calm today though but it started to snow as we were out. In winter it hits -45, maybe need your gloves that day... The sun was peeking over the tops of the mountains and it was a sight to behold. You can drink the water that flows down from the mountains. The drainage from the glacier goes to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, which makes it unique again! The glacier is melting each year and moving and I don't suppose we are helping having so many people out there each year...
So lunch and plenty more snaps later, we left the glacier to head for Peyto and Bow lake in the Bow Valley. We passed the weeping mountain, where you can see the lines of the ice melting and it appears to weep down leaving tears behind. In winter these mountains are used for ice climbing. Once we left the glacier we left Jasper National Park and entered Banff National Park and soon got to the two lakes. Peyto lake is the bluest Lake in Canada, this is due to the rockflour in the water and the reflection from the sun, it was just beautiful. Bow Lake was again lovely, not as blue, but the rain had really started to come down now. We headed on for our final stop of Lake Louise and the Fairmont Chateau. This lake is classed as the jewel of all lakes in Canada but again the weather dampened our view of the sheer beauty of it all. The hotel, as with all Fairmonts was out if this world, even more so after a full refurbishment costing millions. As we checked everything out, we bumped into our friend from the train who modelled his feet for our footeus biggus shot! We had a photo and headed back on our bus for the final part of the day to Banff. After almost 10 hours we arrived at our final hotel, tired but very happy. We are off to explore downtown Banff before another jam packed day tomorrow...
Another day to remember x
PS; the answer to the question is a grizzly bear has a huge muscle lump at the back of his neck...
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