Jasper is very different from Banff. Sort of, anyway. Still the huge rocky mountains dominate the view (there IS a reason behind the name of the range that borders BC and Alberta), still the clear, irridescent lakes, still the murky glacial run-off rivers. But somehow, different.
I think I put it up to the fact that I know each corner and crevace and curve of Banff, but Jasper is somewhere I've spent significantly less time at over my life. Banff is an hour's drive from Calgary, where I grew up. Jasper is more of a day trip for Edmontonians. In fact, when we pulled up into Lake Louise, I instantly settled in and said to Tara “ok, from here to Calgary, we're home.” But that's getting ahead of myself.
We entered Jasper Provincial Park within minutes of crossing the Alberta provinical border, and forked out a good chunk of the daily budget to pay for our park pass for the next four days. Then we tried our luck finding a campsite, which took us all the way across Jasper park to the Miette Hot Springs, which turned out to be our last opportunity for a real bath AND shower for the next four days.
As I mentioned earlier, we arrived at the beginning of the THE (big) August Long Weekend and so the options for finding a campsite were dubious. We ended up in overflow camping, which was cheap and, we were told, was supposed to be awful. When we got there at the end of the day, we saw that it was a bit open and free-for-all compared to the expected cozy campsites otherwise found in mountain parks, but it certainly wasn't awful. I've stayed in “awful” and this wasn't it. No hook ups, but all we did was sleep, afterall.
One day in Jasper we found our way to Maligne Lake. One of the gorgeous Rocky Mountain lakes that you have all seen on postcards or travel brochures for the area. It was a lovely drive along which we saw some caribou and a lot of stupid tourists getting out of their cars and running up to it to take a picture. Tara said “I almost hope he (the caribou) decides to charge”. And its true! Its worse when people see bears along the road, but if you'll let me rant a bit, these irritating people come into the mountain parks expecting it to be a safe place. They conveniently forget that the prime purpose of the parks isn't tourism (although it seems so at times because it brings in so many of those oh-so-important dollars), but to protect the wildlife. They are supposed to be wild. If you walk up to an animal who happens to be on the side of the road, camera poised, expecting it to be relatively harmless because you know no better than what you see on TV, and then are surprised when the mother bear protecting her cubs is a bit agitated by your way-too-close presence, I figure, its almost equivalent to walking up into the centre of a big US-city gang and asking the members to pose. You'd expect them to shoot you with their guns, right? Ga. It always ends up being the animal's fault, somehow, and end up being punished for it. I can go on, but I won't. Just please, if any of you visit the park and happen to be lucky enough to see a magnificent wild animal along the side of the road, allow it to retain its wild splendour and stay in your car.
Back to Maligne Lake in all its splendour. Tara and I rented a canoe, grabbed a couple of peach flavoured coolers, and spent a few hours rowing our way slowly around and along the lake. It was one of the kinds of experiences that can only happen in that breathtaking location, and that you come out feeling like a better person, somehow, from it all. Like your soul has been renewed.
We woke up early one morning, found a coffee in Jasper town, and drove down the Icefields Parkway to the Columbia Icefield. We spent three hours walking on the Athabasca Glacier wing of the Icefields with a guide that day, which falls among my top mountain experiences - right up there with waking up several July mornings a few years ago at 6 am at 5000 altitude in the Himalaya. Wow.
I learned a lot about glaciers by walking on the Athabasca glacier. Like walking on it doesn't damage it. It recedes naturally, ebbs and flows like most natural watery-based things do, but driving on it, like the massive glacier trucks do to eek out more tourist dollars, does damage it. That the Columbia Icefield has three main glacial arms shooting off of it which lead into three different oceans, the Artic, the Pacific, and, amazingly enough, all the way to the Atlantic, making it unique in the world. That if you stood the Eiffel Tower up at the bottom of the glacier, its tip wouldn't stick out at the top. But, that it disappears several visible feet every year. That the reason glacial run-off rivers are so murky compared to the otherwise crystaline lakes everywhere else in the mountains is that there is a “glacial salt” that rubs off the rocks as the glacier recedes and erodes and melts, and that is carried away by the running water and gravity to give the water a milky appearance.
And really, how cool is it to stand on ice in August, bundle up in a toque and extra sweaters, and then walk off of it later in the day to have a cooling beer on a terrace overlooking it and feeling the summer sun burning your skin. What a Great Canadian Experience.
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