Mt Robson Provincial Park, BC to Jasper National Park, AB – 105 Miles
Well, you don’t have to go all the way to Alaska to see spectacular scenery. It’s right here along the Icefields Parkway, just as I remembered it from my previous trip north 15 years ago. The only difference was it was in March that time, and we were going south-to-north, the opposite direction from our current trip. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As usual, it rained most of the night. But happily we seem to have just about all the leak problems resolved. There’s still a tiny bit of seepage above the door, but we can live with that until we get home and I can pull the entire molding strip off and re-seal the joint between the roof and the body of the Tiger. The morning, however, dawned with a promise of sunshine. There were low, broken clouds over most of the sky, but plenty of blue skies peeking through. As we pulled out of our campsite deep in the trees, Mt Robson stood out in all its glory. Only the very top peak was obscured in clouds. We drove over to the Visitor Center parking lot to get an unobstructed view for photographs, and then began the drive up toward Jasper.
We didn’t get far before our first stop, Overland Falls, which is located just a couple of miles east of the Visitor Center. The falls are reached by hiking a few hundred yards down a trail from a roadside parking area. The trail winds downward through a damp forest of hemlock, cedar, and spruce/fir (I can never tell the difference between these two – gotta get me a tree book). After several switchbacks, the trail ends at an overlook just below the falls. These falls are named after an over-land expedition of gold-seekers back in the 1800’s, when most travelers took the long way around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America by boat.
Leaving the falls, the road begins a long, gradual climb up past Moose Lake to the Yellowhead Pass, elevation 3760 feet. This pass marks the border between British Columbia and Alberta, and also the border between Mt Robson Provincial Park and Jasper National Park. Just inside the border there is a park entry station. Vehicles proceeding straight through the park on their way to Edmonton and beyond are waved through, but those planning to stay within the park for a day or more have to pay an entry fee. For us, the senior rate is $16.60 per day.
After another 10 or 12 miles there is a four-way junction – straight ahead takes you to Edmonton, left or north takes you into Jasper, and right or south is Highway 93, the Icefields Parkway. Because we needed gas, we turned left into Jasper, a pleasant resort town of some approximately 4000 permanent residents which I would equate to something like Breckenridge, Colorado without the ski slopes, with a little Estes Park thrown in. It’s a popular summertime resort, with RVs, buses, and even trains (it’s on the Canadian Northern Railroad) full of tourists crowding the main street shopping district. After filling our gas tank ($1.189 per liter – several cents cheaper than BC because of lower taxes in Alberta), we grabbed a pizza for lunch and stopped at a spirits store to replenish our now-depleted wine cellar. Then it was off to the Icefields Parkway.
Our original plan was to go this way in the other direction on our way north, but we decided to wait and do it on the way home. There were a couple of reasons for this: first, we assumed (correctly, it seems) that the crowds would be less later in the summer, and also because it would give us something to look forward to on the long journey home – sort of a tonic to relieve our withdrawal symptoms after so much fantastic scenery in Alaska. It was a good choice to do so. The scenery along this highway is simply gorgeous. The Canadian Rockies, while not as high as those in Colorado, are much younger geologically. As such, they are amazingly rugged, with sharp peaks and ridges for mile after mile. Imagine if you can driving between two Teton Ranges for a hundred and forty miles. But instead of just looking at a single rank of the four or five Tetons, when you look back up the valleys between the peaks all you can see are more and more of the same. I’m at a loss for words to describe this magnificent jumble of rocks and ridges. It seems like each mountain has its own character – there are sharp peaks like Europe’s Matterhorn, and long ridges of sharply uplifted, overlapping flat slabs that look something like Boulder’s Flatirons, only multiplied a hundred-fold in both size and extent. The higher peaks are covered in snow, which lays in layers like the Maroon Bells. And ahead for tomorrow are the icefields and glaciers.
One notable stop between Jasper and tonight’s campsite was at Athabasca Falls, a raging torrent of water where the broad Athabasca River is squeezed between a cleft in the rock perhaps thirty feet wide and dropping forty or fifty feet. The river is heavily laden with glacial silt, and has scoured the faces of the rock into fantastic nooks and crannies. The result is a series of roaring eddies that captures large logs and other debris, continually spinning them as they are unable to escape the power of the water.
We stopped for the night at Jonas Creek Campground, a small, primitive loop of a dozen or so RV pull-ins and a scattering of tent sites around the periphery. I’m sitting here with a glass of wine beside our campfire as the evening tires, my computer in my lap, writing this as I listen to the rushing waters of Jonas Creek just a few yards down the hill. It’s a beautiful life, and we are so blessed to be able to experience the wonders of God’s creation on a trip like this.
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