We were up at sunrise and packing up for real this time to depart Banff and head north toward Jasper National Park. The journey there was nearly all on scenic drives with views aplenty. We began on the Bow Valley Parkway just outside of Banff. Our first stop was at Johnston Canyon. In doing our research, Johnston Canyon looked pretty cool with some high cliffs and narrow passages. None of the pictures we saw did this place justice. Not even close. The trail is on bridges often, hanging off the side of the cliff as the canyon narrows. The water is milky, blue-green glacier water like we saw in Yoho National Park. The canyon features not one, but two beautiful waterfalls. It's a popular trail, but traffic was not too bad this early in the morning. The crowds were heading into the canyon about the time we came out from our 3.2-mile hike.
We rolled by the Castle Cliffs just before the end of the Bow Valley Parkway. It was then down Hwy 1 to the Icefields Parkway, which connects from Lake Louise all the way up to Jasper some 139 miles away. The parkway follows the Continental Divide and passes by a few glaciers. It began to rain just as we started the parkway. Our first stop was at Bow Lake, where it was raining heavily and pretty cold. We had planned to hike to the Bow Glacier Falls a few miles away, but you could actually see it from the trailhead. That was good enough for us as we decided to keep moving and hope for better weather.
The rain lightened up by the time we reached Mistaya Canyon. We didn't know anything about this one so we just went for it. A short hike brought a view of a deep, deep little canyon. The creek flowing through these rocks had cut way, way down, deeper than anything I had ever seen before.
The rain finally stopped and then the sun decided to show itself as we reached a big climb featuring a few sharp turns known as "The Big Bend." The view from the top is unreal. It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. I felt like I was inside a painting. There's a couple of viewpoints. We saw a small sign at the woodline on the final parking lot and decided to stop to see what it said. It was a trail marker. We could hear water in the distance and saw a giant waterfall on the mountain in front of us. Expecting the trail to go to that waterfall, we set out down the hill. We quickly came to an even bigger waterfall that we could not see from the trailhead. The water was almost exploding off the side of the mountain with major force. We got soaked just trying to get pictures. The trail continued on down into the gorge below. We followed it for a while, but it kept getting more sketchy. It was narrow, exposed and wet. We decided to turn back. The two waterfalls were called Panther Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. I saw maps that had the names swapped around so I am not sure which one was which. I would guess the one we walked right up to would be Bridal Veil as I could easily see how it would look like a bridal veil with a bit less water volume. Once back to the trailhead, I ventured into the woods in hopes of finding the top of the waterfall we could not see. After a couple of minutes, I found it. The view was again amazing. I hopped out on some rocks for a killer view, but it was a bit sketchy. It was really, really high and there were gaps in the rocks I had to get over to get to the best viewpoint. I stood there just for a few seconds to take in the view and let Shannon snap a picture, then took my shaky legs back to more solid ground. What a cool find. We didn't see anybody else while we were hiking here. Thanks whoever put that little sign there.
Killer view, but the height made my knees weak. Glad I went out there, but I was happy to come back too.
In the early afternoon we crossed into Jasper National Park and reached the Athabasca Glacier, our first time ever visiting a glacier. The road passes right by it. It is one of six glaciers flowing down from the Columbia Icefield. There is a visitor's center there called the Icefield Centre, and trails that allow you to hike right to the edge of the glacier. Like at the Banff Cave & Basin, the visitor center was a little odd. It's all about how the glacier has been shrinking. They made you feel bad about how you helped melt the glacier by driving up here today...but if you pay $99 they will drive you right out onto the glacier itself in a huge snowbus vehicle. Seems a little counterproductive to the glacier-saving efforts. The Canadian government seems to point the finger at you, while breaking their own glacier/environmental "rules" if you are willing to pay them for it. We hiked the Toe of the Glacier trail up the debris field past Sunwapta Lake to the glacier. We weren't allowed to touch it or walk on it. You have to pay the $99 for that.
The thing I found most interesting was that the glacier has its own microclimate due to its temperature. It was cloudy above the glacier and across the icefield, with snow falling down onto it. The melt came off next to the trail, flowing down into the thick waters of Sunwapta Lake. The water in the lake was dark and murky, filled with more minerals than you will find in any other water since the minerals are so heavily concentrated when coming directly out of the glacier. It looked like a mud puddle, but it was chalky water filled with rock dust pulverized by the glacier. The dust is called "rock flour." On the hike back there are pictures at points where the glacier used to be. You can tell it has melted a lot over the years, especially in the last 30 years. I'm not going to start an argument about any aspect of climate change with anybody, especially not here on my blog, but I do want to bring up that the signs here blame all the melting on cars, yet their own markers and pictures show the glacier receeding considerably before the car boom of the early-1900s. I saw markers all the way back to 1844, long before cars, with major receeding seen between then and 1900. Just an observation.
After our glacier hike, we stopped at nearby Tangle Falls, then went out in search of a campsite for the night. We ended up at Honeymoon Lake Campground where we found some secluded sites in a forest of trees. They had a place where campers could leave their firewood for others to use so we got free wood again, but it was too wet for a good fire. We ended up spending the evening exploring one more area instead of cooking over the flames. Close by the campground was Sunwapta Falls. A bridge crosses over the upper portion of the falls and gives you a view of another deep, narrow canyon. We hiked down along the canyon and found more rapids and another set of smaller falls with a beautiful view. We got back out of the woods just before dark to finish up just over 8 miles on foot for the day.
We covered about 2/3 of the Icefields Parkway the first day. We were up again at sunrise and on the road quickly, heading straight for Jasper on day two. We wanted to get there early as we heard the Maligne Canyon area can get quite crowded later in the day. There were no stops along the way for exploring today. Maligne Canyon is another deep canyon, filled with beautiful waterfalls, forests and viewpoints. You navigate the trail by crossing bridges back and forth over the creek. Each bridge is named by its number. You can access the trail from many of the bridges. We started at the parking lot for First Bridge, but took the trail to Second Bridge for our first look at the canyon. We followed the stream 1.5 miles down to Fifth Bridge, then took every alternate trail on the way back, going all the way up to First Bridge. We saw a few fossils in the rocks near First Bridge, which just put the icing on the cake for the morning.
We continued further into Jasper National Park on Maligne Lake Rd, passing by Medicine Lake before running into a traffic jam. People were lined up along the road with cameras so we pulled off and had a look. There were two moose crossing a pond. They took their time and let everyone get plenty of shots, never really paying attention to the crowd.
The road ends at Maligne Lake, the largest natural lake in the Canadian Rockies. We hiked around the lake and little village, grabbing a small lunch, then heading back toward the town of Jasper. We saw more moose on our drive out and stopped to see Sixth Bridge before having some ice cream in town. The afternoon started off by going back to the Icefields Parkway to see the things we drove by earlier in the morning. We took a side road through the forest and climbed up to Marmot Basin, a ski resort that was closed at this point in the season. We saw some HUGE dandelions up there. Then we visited Athabasca Falls for another killer glacier-fed waterfall. We actually finished everything earlier than expected so we decided to hit the road and start moving further west. Our next target was Wells Gray Provincial Park some four hours away near the town of Clearwater, BC.
We drove through Mt. Robson Provincial Park and eventually found a small campground right before dark. We found it by accident. We were getting low on gas and had not seen a gas station in a long while until we spotted one up ahead. It was closed. As we checked the map for the nearest town we noticed the Robson River Campground nestled in the woods up ahead. We decided it best to stay here and look for gas tomorrow when more things would be open. We got the last campsite available. It was a small, simple campground, but they had warm showers, which has been pretty hard to find outside of the big national park campgrounds.
More on our time in BC in the next post!
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