Tuesday, August 9

I decided to get out of camp today and join Julie and Michele’s car camping adventure to Jasper National Park. There were 17 of us who made the ~4 hour drive to Jasper to spend a night in a campground. I ended up in a car with a great group of people – Michele was driving, I was navigating and Clare and Walter were traveling with us. All of them are people I know back in Boston and it was good to spend time on a long drive with some familiar faces.

The Icefields Parkway is the road to Jasper. It starts at the Trans-Canada Highway (Rte 1) and heads north through some truly breathtaking scenery. Mountains. Glaciers. Alpine Blue Lakes. This road has them all. I was particularly stunned by the view of Bow Lake. The lighting was perfect as we drove past and the water was calm enough that it looked like a sheet of glass that reflected the surrounding mountains brilliantly. And I saw all of this scenery from the front seat of a mini-van. Nothing will ever beat hiking for the views and sense of “getting away from it all”, but just driving down a road like this lets you see a wider variety of scenery that you could ever do in a day of hiking. I still prefer hiking, but seeing stuff from a car wasn’t too bad either.

Another feature of the Icefields Parkway is what we called “critter jams”. The first time we came upon a group of cars (including a bus) literally stopped in the middle of the road, we weren’t too sure what was going on so we kept going. As we went past, we caught a quick glance of a black bear scampering up a hill out of sight. Ooops – we had just missed it.

Fortunately, just a few more miles up the road, another black bear crossed the highway a couple of hundred feet in front of our van. We pulled over and likely started a critter jam of our own. This bear was running past our car less than 100 feet from the side of the road. I was lucky enough to be in the best seat for taking a picture of it. I rolled down the window and snapped away. None of these shots turned out to be truly stellar, but you can definitely tell we were close to a bear. Kind of cool, but not as cool as what we would see a few hours later.

After a brief stop at the Icefields Visitors Center for a bathroom break and chance to fill our water bottles, we backtracked a few miles to Wilcox Pass for our “big” hike of the day. This hike is shorter than the ones I did the past two days – just five miles and 1100 feet of elevation, but it may have more “bang for the buck” than either of those hikes. The first half mile or so is a steep ascent through the woods, but that is all you have to do to get above tree line. The rest of the way to the summit (side note – this was more of a saddle than the summit of a mountain. Very few hikes in the Canadian Rockies get you to a true mountain summit) offers amazing views in every direction. Glaciers, larger than any others I’d see all week. Tall mountains. A stream. Magnificent.

I believe the top of Wilcox Pass was actually the highest elevation I achieved all week (7800 feet). We sat at the “summit” for lunch and took a group photo courtesy of a woman we met up there who happened to live in Boston. Small world yet again. We had some time to explore and I walked down to take a few pictures of the stream below.

As some people in the group were starting to pack up for the trip back, I noticed a few other members of the group coming down a path up a nearby ridge that I had somehow missed. Fortunately, Julie let me head up there while the rest of the group was packing to leave. I more or sprinted up the path (without my pack) and was rewarded with yet another stunning view of the Athabasca Glacier. The cost of this was that I was the last person in our group to leave the summit. Despite this, I was among the first people to arrive back at the cars so I didn’t feel like I was holding the group up. All in all, this was another amazing hike in the Canadian Rockies.

We got back in the cars and continued our journey northbound on the Icefields Parkway.  It wasn’t long before we came upon our biggest critter jam of the day. We didn’t see what it was all about as we slowly crept by the main part of the traffic, but a couple hundred feet beyond that a Grizzly Bear emerged out of the woods right next to our car. It was no more than 50 feet away and I was (still) in the best seat for taking pictures. I rolled down the window and this time I got some truly incredible shots of the bear walking through a field. In several of the shots, he’s looking right into the camera. I have to admit I had a brief moment of panic thinking that he might be getting a little too close for comfort. Fortunately, he did not and the pictures were well worth it. Several people commented one or two of these pictures were postcard worthy and that I should look into submitting it to some photo competitions. We’ll see. If nothing else, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to take a picture of a real Grizzly Bear in the wild from very close range.

We didn’t actually have a campground reserved for the night so we showed up at the Wapiti Campground just outside the town of Jasper and hoped for the best. We got it: three sites right next to each other. Better still: this campground had free firewood AND hot showers. I love it when a plan comes together! Some members of the group had a bit of an adventure setting up camp. Everyone’s tents went up fine, but there was a threat of rain so they attempted to set up tarps over the picnic tables. Unfortunately, the tarps we had were too small for this and we did not have enough rope to do the job properly. Oh well, the group soldiered on until Julie put an end to the exercise so we could head into the town of Jasper for dinner.

Jasper has a lot of nice restaurants, but we somehow ended up at a place that was literally attached to a gas station. Fortunately for us, the Bright Spot Family Restaurant and Pizzeria was actually perfect for what we needed. It had a wide variety of good food at a reasonable price. Our waiter was excellent and even accommodated our request to put candles in the piece of cake we had him bring out for Julie. Tomorrow is her birthday but somehow she was still surprised at this piece of cake coming out to her. She saw it coming with the candle burning and later told us she was thinking “I wonder who that is for? Oh yeah, me….”

After dinner, we meandered around Jasper for a while. It’s a cute little “vacation-type” town with gorgeous scenery in every direction. Back at camp, I took advantage of the hot shower and even shaved for the only time all week. It felt good to be clean and non-scruffy looking. When I got back to the campsite, our own little campfire was starting. It lacked the “formality” of the one back at base camp, but was nice in its own right. A few of us even managed to stay awake past dark (which doesn’t happen until 10pm) and put the campfire out right at the campground’s 11pm curfew. Crazy times – staying up (almost) past curfew.

My tent mate for the night was a guy named Gordon. We slept in a backpacker’s tent that was borrowed from Julie. Although it was a little cozy, Gordon only tried to cuddle up to me one time during the night. I guess I should consider that a success!

(NOTE: no hikes for Wednesday since I wasn’t at camp to hear the options.)

Previous    |    Top    |    Next