The first full day based in Golden I decided to drive to up to Jasper National Park to see how the recovery from the devastating wildfire last year is coming along, and to see the extent of damage for myself. To get there I would first have to go back through Yoho National Park to get to Hwy 93. I then drove quite a while in Banff NP before actually getting to Jasper NP at the start of the “Icefields Parkway,” which is considered by some to be the most scenic drive in Canada. So I will break this first Jasper post up into 4 parts – Going through Banff NP, driving up the Icefields Parkway, Jasper NP and, finally, the town of Jasper.
After driving north through Yoho NP I turned left on Route 93 to head towards the town of Jasper. Mapquest says the total drive time from Golden to the town of Jasper is 3 1/2 hours. It will take considerably longer than that because it seemed like I was stopping every 10 minutes to take photos of something.
As soon as I got on Rte 93 I started taking pictures. This is Herbert Lake. Looking left:
And looking right:
It’s all on one side of the highway, it’s just a big lake! Seemingly everywhere you look up here there are mountains.
And this is just getting from Point A to Point B!
A closer look at the mountain on the right, and the more of many glaciers you will see.
One of the amusing trailhead and campsite signs I saw.
I wonder if this mosquito attracts many humans? I suspect so….
Rivers and streams come in two types up here – glacier fed and normal rain runoff. This is an example of the latter:
Crystal clear, and very cold, water
This is my first look at Bow Lake, fed by the Bow Glacier. Remember that name, as it will be a recurring theme once I get further down the road to the town of Banff.
Glacier fed lakes and rivers have various tints, depending on the minerals released when the ice pack (glacier) on top of the mountain melts. This one is a very pretty turquoise color. As you can tell from the photos it was overcast this morning so the color of the water isn’t as rich as it would be if there was a bright blue sky overhead. Bow Lake is quite large. This is a little further up the road where there was a pullout for cars and tour buses to stop.
Sometimes the reward for taking pictures is being in the right place at precicely the right time. As I was walking back to the pullout area where I had parked my car the sun came out behind me VERY briefly. Just long enough to create a rainbow over the lake.
The photos don’t really do it justice. Because I was so close to it the colors in the rainbow were very vivid, especially the blues, indigos and violets.
This was walking up the hill to another lake just up the road. Peyto Lake is also glacier fed, from the, you guessed it, Peyto Glacier.
There was a sign indicating we were at 2,078 meters elevation (6,817 feet), the highest point on the Icefields Parkway. I presume they were talking about the roadway getting here, as we were still walking up a VERY steep, albeit paved, trail to get to a scenic viewpoint for the lake below. I was huffing and puffing, and exclaimed to another person walking near me that I didn’t expect to have to climb a mountain to see a lake. I found him when we got to the observation platform and told him it was SO worth it.
The glacier, which you can’t really see because of the clouds, is in the upper far left corner of both photos above. If you look closely you can see how the water drains down through the brownish gray area to get to the lake itself.
Here’s the whole lake in one photo:
The next section of my journey to the town of Jasper would take me through the Icefields Parkway. If you think you’ve seen some glaciers so far, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
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