Heading to Jasper

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Today we left Banff and headed towards Jasper, approximately 200 km north. The drive is along a beautiful but sometimes treacherous road called the Icefield Parkway. It passes a number of glaciers which you can stop and view and at one spot you can even touch the toe of the glacier. In winter, this is a bit hard because everything is white and icy. You wouldn’t know where the snow finished and the glacier started! Also it we had limited daylight hours to make the drive and it was snowing on the way there. With snow falling along such a road, your goal is to spend as little time on it as possible! However, there is a small road between Banff and Lake Louise called the Bow Valley Parkway which we drove along before hitting the Icefield Parkway. We took our time on this road, stopping to do some walks and take lots of photos. One of the stops we made was at Johnstons Canyon. This was an absolutely amazing walk. There is a track that follows the canyon down to waterfall at the end. In spots you walk along a metal bridge along the side, looking down over the canyon. Of course, being winter, it is all frozen. So you get amazing ice formations, especially where water has been flowing over the edge of rock and has frozen. It looks like the waterfall had frozen in mid air! Sometimes under these formations, there is heaps of water pounding through the ice. We walked to the end of the canyon where there is a magnificent waterfall that is all frozen. Blue and white ice is hanging down all above and around you. At this spot, there were ice climbers perched on the ice above us. They were making there way to the top of the waterfall which was along way above us all!
By the time we got back to the car, we had been gone for a couple of hours which meant we had to get on the move if we wanted to make it into Jasper by dark. It took quite a few hours to drive the Icefield Parkway, particularly as it was snowing heavily and visibility was reduced significantly. It was almost dark as we drove into Jasper, the time when Elk and wander out on the roads in big groups to graze. This is a bit of hazard given that at dusk your headlights aren’t working that well and the Elk are a brown-grey colour so they blend in with the road. Just before the turnoff to Jasper we came upon a large herd of Elk on the road. Luckily we were able to stop in time, but this time we got some photos.

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