August 8, 2025
After walking and driving through parts of downtown I drove “around back” to see two lakes located behind town. Once I got back there there was absolutely no indication that anything bad had happened.
This is Pyramid Lake, and behind it is Pyramid Mountain.
That is the Pyramid Lake Lodge and across the road is another view of the lake with docks and various watercraft for guests to use.
I wasn’t able to get to Patricia Lake, although I don’t think it was technically off limits.
I drove back towards the downtown area and crossed the Athabasca River to take a quick drive through the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge property, a high-end hotel. It is on the “fire side” of the tracks but was apparently protected by workers and firefighters and only lost a few small buildings. The main lodge and most of the other buildings appeared to be intact.
Just off the road to the Fairmont property I did see this animal, eating grass in a burned out area of the forest. I initially thought it was a cow moose but I now believe it was an elk because a few minutes later I saw 30 or so elk as I was leaving Jasper. I sent pictures of them to a few friends called them moose and one of my brothers pointed out that they were elk.
This is the intersection of Hwy 16 (Connaught Drive) and Hwy 93 (the Icefields Parkway) as I was leaving town.
Across the intersection is Whistlers Peak which is where the Jasper Sky Tram goes. It is the highest and longest aerial tram in Canada. As far as I can tell that part of the mountain was not affected by the wildfire. Left of that is Marmot Mountain where the Marmot Basin ski area is located. It, too, was unaffected by the fire.
Once I turned south on Hwy 93 there were several vehicles stopped on both sides of the road and people were milling about with their cameras. Of course I stopped and joined them. There were about 30 elk resting on the ground in a grove of burnt out trees. They appeared to be adult females and some younger ones but I didn’t see any antlers so apparently there weren’t any adult males.
I continued south towards Golden, wanting to get there before dark. This is the view as I approached Mt. Hardisty. You can see the burnt out trees on both sides of the highway.
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