Foiled by the Weather

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To date we have felt very lucky relative to the weather, again this morning we awoke to a pretty dismal sight—wet fog probably only 50 feet above the ground… Were we going to be lucky and have the weather clear or was our lucky streak going to end?…

Statistics

Starting Destination: Bow Lake, Alberta, Canada
Ending Destination: Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada
Ending Destination GPS: N: 49° 31.845’ W: 115° 44.727’ Elev: 3013’
Miles Driven: 345.2
Seen actually driving along the road: A pumpkin orange Lamborghini
Most interesting Business Name: Pita Wrap It (fast food)

The Icefields Parkway; Take 2

On our trip to Jasper yesterday we had passed signs for Peyto Lake, purportedly the bluest lake in the Rockies—it wasn’t too far from the Lodge so we thought we would go back and take a look! By the time we got to the lake the weather had cleared enough for us to walk up to the viewing platform and not get too wet! The sight was worth the effort, but we are not sure our photograph (left) does justice to the color! We drove back down the parkway into Lake Louise to get a map of the trails within the park—we were interested in seeing where we had hiked. We know, a bit late after we had already completed the walks!! We then drove out of Banff National Park into Yoho National Park along the road to Golden. By this time we have considered that we are on a “streak,” so we stopped just a little early and had lunch on the Continental Divide—the third time we have crossed it so far this trip!

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The spiral tunnels.

While in the Information Center, Maria overheard one of the guides talking about railway tunnels where, it the train is long enough, you can see it “coming” and going!” We were surprised that further along the road, we encountered them! There was a pretty extensive rest stop and view point where you could barely see the inlet and outlet to one of the tunnels (left). There are two tunnels that spiral around inside the mountain to gain elevation, but keep the grade appropriate for trains. Before the tunnels were installed the grade on the train line had been 4.5%!((MISSING)maximum grade in the construction contract was 2%!)(MISSING) and there had been a significant number of runaway trains… The tunnels were modeled after some similar tunnels in Switzerland—from a construction perspective it was interesting to note that the tunnels were completed in 1908, they had two construction crews working from either end which met in the middle with only 5cm difference between the tunnels!!
Not knowing when the next train would come through we continued on our journey—only to encounter a train about a mile down the road. So we turned around and hoped that it would be traveling slowly enough for us to get to the viewpoint first!! Success!... We saw the train go in one end of the tunnel and then come out the upper entrance while it still going in (left)… In fact the train was almost long enough for us to see it go in, come out and pass on the track in front of the view point!

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From one Glacier to another…

We continued along, our next destination—the Canadian Glacier National Park. We were traveling almost due West and the weather kept teasing us, until finally it settled in and really started to rain… The main trans-Canada highway is only 2 lanes in most places so things got a little hairy when people who knew the road better came roaring past us—especially when we were traveling the speed limit! Although it does look like there is a major effort underway to “twin” the road, we passed some construction between Banff and Lake Louise and then before coming into Golden—there were some pretty impressive bridge pylons under construction so the new road should be very nice. We decided that the US is very spoilt with the Interstate system! The road travels directly into Glacier National Park through some pretty steep sided gorges with rocky outcroppings and hardly any trees on the slopes of the Selkirk Mountains. If anything, the peaks were even more jagged than those in Banff and Jasper National Parks! We stopped at the visitors center and learned that this road has the most active avalanche control program in the world—accounting for the lack of trees, we also saw what we thought were hard points where the Park Service would anchor the Howitzers they use to create the avalanches. At one time the Canadian Pacific railway went through this same pass, from the model it looked like the line was almost one great big long snow shed… Eventually, after several disasters, a tunnel was constructed under the mountain! So, at this point we faced a dilemma—do we continue on to Revelstoke National Park and the “going to the meadows” road that would be great for riding our bikes or declare the “weather” a winner and proceed towards out next destination?

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In which the Weather Wins..

Yes, we declared a truce and decided to re-trace our steps back into the US. Maria commented that it was a good thing that we hadn’t instituted a “no backtracking” policy!! We drove back through the Columbia River Valley—Golden, Radium Hot Springs and then on to Cranbrook where we spent the night at a motel to escape the rain!

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Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: Air Bubbles—under the great pressure air is squeezed from the ice and the ice becomes gradually bluer as the amount of air decreases.
Today’s Question: What is the diameter of a Howitzers projectile?

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Comments

[Paul Cox]

It depends
What defines a Howitzer is the ratio of the gun barrel to the diameter of the projectile, a barrel length of less than 30 diameters causes a high arching / high angle of fire trajectory. Today common diamerters are 155mm, 105mm, 75mm was common in WWII. In Forest Service use I would guess the older 75mm, or possible the 105mm.

[Kristi Tafolla]

howitzer
There is a 155mm Howitzer and also an 8 inch Howitzer.