Ice and Snow at the Columbia Icefields

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We had breakfast in the restaurant next door to the hotel. All the waitresses were Aussies, but not the friendly type unfortunately, at least not to fellow Aussies.

Walked around town up and down the main street in the morning, lots and lots and lots of souvenier shops. Went hunting for a beanie for me because it’s not exactly warm and I’m a pussy as you all know when it’s less than 35 degrees! Easier said than done because of my pin head, there are heaps of really cool kids animal beanies though, so I have loads of fun trying them all on!

Drove to Columbian Icefields to see the glaciers, or more precisely the Athabasca Ice Glacier. The drive is, as we have now come to expect, like driving through a postcard. Beautiful mountains, with snow getting closer and closer and amazing lakes the colour blue I cannot describe except to say they are the clearest most pure blue I have ever seen. I doubt that any picture could truly be accurate in getting it right. Some of the snow looks close enough to be able to walk to, but that’s only because the mountains are so huge that in comparison the distance looked small.

We had pre purchased our tickets on the internet but still had to wait in a long queue to exchange our printout for proper tickets, got on 3:45 bus, so we only had to wait an hour or so, fortunately there is a shop to keep us busy and a café upstairs to get a bit to eat. We can see the glacier gleaming in the distance, it gets you excited waiting because it now seems so close.

The bus takes you to meet the Ice Explorer bus half way up the mountain. The Ice Explorer is a huge bus with the hugest tyres, it doesn’t break any land speed records (16kph tops) but easily chugs through all the ice and snow and the steep hill to get to glacier.

Freezing cold is an understatement, glad I had beanie and gloves, even though Tim laughed at me. There were little streams of melting ice along the top. Tim drank the glacier water, his hands were frozen but he said it tasted nice. Other people planned ahead and had empty water bottles.

There were people who didn’t come up in the Ice Explorer and walked from the Information Centre. If you really wanted to save a couple of bucks and had shoes that walked along the ice okay, this is an option, but it does get pretty slippery in spots, and again it’s sooo cold! And besides the Ice Explorer is fun and the driver is pretty informative.

The glacier is 300 metres in thickness (the height of the Eiffel Tower) which sounds huge but it is also shrinking. The guide pointed out the new car park that has been created because the glacier has shrunk so much.

We stopped at Bow Lake and Herbert Lake on the way back. Both are huge, mirror flat and the most clear blue colour.

We saw our first chipmunk (thought it was a squirrel for about 20 minutes before we were corrected by some people from Texas) at Herbert Lake. It was small, super cute and so quick, like it was all pumped up on coffee!

We had Boston Pizza in town for dinner, it was very nice and they gave us a doggy bag dessert because we couldn’t eat it there. Again, all the staff were Aussies, we were served by a guy from Sydney, at least they were a lot friendlier than the Aussie staff at the restaurant the hotel uses for breakfast.

Stopped for petrol on the way back to the hotel. Petrol cannot be purchased unless it is pre-paid or a credit card is left at the counter first. It took a while to figure it out, but we got there in the end. But on the up side, we found a Canadian working there!

Back at our hotel we had a spa, looking out at the snow - again living in a postcard! Went to sleep ready for our Bear Tour tomorrow. Fingers crossed we see one or five!

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