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Published: October 25th 2012
On Thursday 18th October, I joined a 4 day tour to travel into the Rockie mountains. The tour left Vancouver and had stopovers in Kelowna, Banff, Jasper and then back to Banff for the final night. We left Vancouver with about 19 people and then finished in Banff with about 15 (no bear attacks, freezing to death etc. it was a hop on/hop off type tour and a few people left the tour along the way).
Day 1 - Vancouver to Kelowna On Thursday morning I met the 19 people who would be my travelling companions for the next four nights. Leaving Vancouver we had our first stop about an hour and a half later at Bridal Veil Falls. A short walk got us to the base of the falls so named due to their likeliness to, you guessed it, a brides veil!
On we went to the town of Hope, the Chainsawing Carving Capital, for our lunchbreak. The town was my first experience of a true Canadian town – wide streets, big trucks, and interesting wooden statues. The statues have been created by contestants in previous years of the Annual Chainsaw Carving competition. The statues are pretty amazing
given that they are created with chainsaws, however we were told that the contestants start out with a massive tree trunk and start with big chainsaws and work their way down to tiny little chainsaws for the intricate details. Apparently Hope is also famous for being the backdrop in a Rocky movie (please do not ask me which one, or what scene as I have no clue!!)
A few stops later and we arrived in Kelowna for the night. Kelowna is a town situated on the edge of a massive lake called Okanagan Lake it is about 180km long and at it’s widest about 50kms across! It is a major summer destination and also a key stopping point between Vancouver and Banff.
Day 2 - Kelowna to Banff Back on the road the next morning at 8.15 we started to make our way to Banff. The first rest stop along the way was at a roadside restaurant which had a range of activities to keep travellers amused. Check out my video below of the goat! Our guide was telling our group that this particular restaurant makes Beaver Milk Ice Cream, even though it is illegal, and if you
were to ask them at the counter for it they would ‘get it from out the back’. Several of the group fell for this and asked the bemused shop assistants if they could try the Beaver Milk Ice Cream. Back on the bus our next stop was to our lunchtime destination of Revelstoke – a small town which our guide referred to as "not really exciting, so let's just use the washrooms and then eat our lunch on the bus on the way..." so we all agreed to this. By this time, we had started to experience the roads being covered in snow, and from time to time had snow falling. Just leaving Revelstoke we got stopped at a road block because the road we needed to take to Banff was closed due to a head on fatality earlier in the morning, we were told no traffic was getting through until at least 4p, so back to the exciting town of Revelstoke where we, and about 100 other peope, camped out at a Tim Horton's and took advantage of the free wifi - go Tim Hortons!!!
We finally received word about 3.30pm that the road had been reopened so back
on the bus and up the mountain we went (along with a day's worth of traffic) and made it to Banff about 8.45pm. It was unfortunate that the accident had closed the road off as it meant that we could not stop at Emerald Lake, but thankfully we had arrived safely.
Day 3 - Banff to Jasper Waking to a chilly -6 degrees we all piled on bus at 8.00am and got settled in for a quick drive down the road to Lake Louise, possibly one of the most photographed lakes in the northern hemisphere. We managed to get some good photos before the snow started coming down really heavily. For protection from the snow, we made our way to the Chateau Fairmont (a very expensive hotel right on the edge of the lake) and wandered around it's massive foyer and shops. We probably didn't fit in with the rest of the clientele, however the staff appeared very lovey and courteous to us.
Next stop on the road was the Mistaya Canyon, a really cool limestone canyone which has been created from the Mistaya River flowing really fast through this section. It was really cool, and even though
the track was closed and it was an 'enter at own risk' situation it was great to do. The walk down to the Mistaya Canyon was amazing, it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere!
We arrived early afternoon at the Columbia Icefield which is the largest icefield south of the Arctic Circle (it's 325 square kilometres!). Normally tours are run out to the icefield using vehicles which are specially modified to drive on the ice, however due to the weather conditions the tours had not been conducted for the last two days. We decided that we would hike out for a little bit and see how far we could get...we decided about 20mins in that we needed to turn back because one of the girls had stepped slightly off the path and ended up almost waist deep in snow and we could also see a huge whiteout moving towards us. Continuing on, the roads were pretty icy and trecherous. I am glad I trusted my instincts and joined the tour rather than hire a car - I can just picture myself driving along in these conditions I'd have tears streaming down my face that I didn't
want to go any further, but too afraid to turn back. We made it into Jasper late in the afternoon and really only stopped for supplies as our hostel for the night was a wilderness lodge about 30kms out of Jasper.
Our wilderness lodge was a beautiful place made up of several 16 bed cabins and a large kitchen and lounge cabin...there was no running water in the lodge which meant no showers and we had two outhouses for our toilets. Because it was the first snow fall of the season we had to keep all of our food in the kitchen area as the owner told us we ran the risk of either bears or squirrels trying to get into our cabins. Now personally, I would have freaked out about a squirrel being in there, but clearly that would have been nothing to having a bloody brown bear break the door down to hunt out food. The first ten minutes of unpacking had everyone checking every single bag they owned to make sure we didn't leave any food in the cabins!! Apart from checking there were no bears around when you needed to make the dash to the outhouses
Peyto Lake
It was such an amazing colour!it was a really relaxing night at the wilderness lodge.
Day 4 - Jasper to Banff Overnight at the Wilderness Lodge it got as cold as -14 degrees and so it really was a quick dash to the outhouse when you woke up! Trying to pack our gear into the bus created a challenge when the backdoors to the bus would not open due to them being frozen solid!! We had to pile all our bags and suitcases into the aisles of the bus!!
We had our first stop of the day at beautiful Athabasca Falls which were about 30metres down the road from the wilderness lodge. After that we started our way back down to Banff, the roads were in even worse condition than the day before and it was a little scary at times! For the most part you could not even see the roads they were so covered in snow and ice. Mid afternoon we stopped at Peyto Lake, which was an amazing blue glacier-fed lake. It took us about 15mins to hike through ankle deep snow to get to the lake but it was completely worth it! From here, we asked our guide if
we could stop back at Lake Louise as it was a lovely sunny day and we were hoping for some more pictures. Walking the 100metres or so down to the lake was where I finally went A over T - pretty good considering I had been walking around on ice and snow for the last four days without a single slip 😊 Arriving back in Banff late afternoon we wandered around the pretty town before having dinner and then headingout to check out the Banff nightlife. It was a very fun night out - and cheap too! I was drinking Jameson and
Dry for only $4.50 and then we were getting vodka's for only $2.75 at a nighclub we were in.
Naturally, everyone was a little more sedate on Monday morning, with some people having only arrived back at the hostel at 5am, so several of us wandered down to Starbucks to kickstart us. I spent all of yesterday wandering around Banff and enjoying the beautiful scenery. Banff Avenue is full of your typical tourist type shops and restaurants however it is a beautiful town.
This morning I was up early to catch the bus from Banff through
to Edmonton with a short stopover in Calgary. Walking down to the bus station in the snow it was a mere -10 degrees and it was lovely to get to the station. I am now sitting on an fancy pants Greyhound bus (it has wifi and comfy leather seats) between Calgary and Edmonton. Tomorrow night I head off on my train trip from Edmonton to Toronto which will be a long journey. The train is due to leave Edmonton at 11.30 Wednesday night and I will arrive in Toronto at 9.30am Saturday morning! All of my meals are included as part of my train ticket and I have booked an upper berth sleeper. Hopefully it is a cool trip.
NOTE - It is now Wednesday evening and it has taken me more than 24hrs to find a wifi connection that is good enough to post this blog...there has been many coffees and teas consumed along the way trying to seek out free wifi. I am going to be boarding the train in hopefully 6hours time...keep your fingers crossed for me that it is on time.
By the way - I spent my time today out at Edmonton Mall,
at a mere 8kms long the mall has heaps of indoor entertainment including rollercoasters, a massive water park with about 17 waterslides, a lagoon style pool which has sea lions swimming around in it and a indoor mini golf range...plus a load of shops. The best part of it was that I managed to catch up with my friend Rachelle who I meet last year when I was travelling in Europe. We had a great time catching up!!
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Michelle
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Have you seen any bears yet?