Wednesday, May 26th
From Across the Great Divide
So, so slow,
Can you feel me letting go?
I, I know that we turn away
When the cracks begin to show.— Adrienne Pierce. Lost & Found.
I am woken up by the sound of a woodpecker. The lake drowses quietly in the morning sun, not the smallest ripple anywhere. The mountains stand out sharply gleaming before a blue sky. There is a path alongside the lake and through the forest. I use the opportunity for another morning run. A white headed eagle is taking off from one of the trees as I pass by and flies away across the lake. If you’d turn this morning into a movie, people would reject it as unrealistic.
I am very much tempted to just stay here and spend the day idling by the lake. But there are plenty of miles to go and a mountain range to look at. Reluctantly, I leave. As I pull into the petrol station down in Jasper, a train pulls out of the train station. When I am done filling up the car and cleaning the wind shield, it is still pulling out. I have to wait for some more minutes at the railway crossing. The end of the train is audibly announced by the horribly noise of the tail engine. Maybe the American railways should consider installing sound absorbers. Their neighbours would probably like that.
I take what is named the Icefields Parkway, running in a south-easterly fashion first through Jasper National Park and then through Banff National Park. At its beginning stands a sign warning that bears are always dangerous and never cute. It doesn’t say the latter but that’s basically what it means.
At the park gates, the girl greets me with ‘Bonjour!’ Happens all the time that people think I am French, not that I am complaining. Now I only actually need to learn French.
As the road is already very busy with RVs and drivers taking it slow, I happily accept the option for a little detour along the other side of the river. It serves as access to several roads up into the mountains, but they are all still closed. One could stop at Otto’s Cache, but it probably has been emptied long since. Instead, I stop at a place called Meeting of the Rivers (it’s been three weeks without meetings after all), where the Whirlpool River flows into the Athabasca. Later, the road crosses over Whirlpool River on a bridge that looks suspiciously like a bridge from an actual park. The delicate cast iron railing is painted green and supported by plastered pillars.
Next up is Athabasca Falls which, as far as waterfalls go, is very impressive. The river has blasted its way through a barrier and now falls maybe twenty metres into a gorge and beyond. There is several trails to look at it from all sides.
In the parking lot parks a car with Dutch license plates. Apparently, the Dutch grew bored with blocking the left lanes of German motorways with their slow campers and moved on to international shipping lanes now.
Above the falls, the river becomes lazy; very shallow and wide and very, very turquoise. On both sides of the valley rise impressive mountains. As always, on is tempted to make a million pictures none of which even remotely achieves to give an impression of the sight. Especially now, with clouds moving in quickly, the pictures would be mostly white and grey and boring. So I just move on.
The road climbs out from the valley bottom for a bit and winds along the left side of the valley. The mountains on this side have strange flanks, going straight up rather flat at about forty degrees all the way to the top. For twenty kilometres, the speed is limited to 70 km/h because of frequent caribou crossings, yet I don’t get to see a single caribou.
We leave the Athabasca and instead follow Sunwapta River now. Its valley is rather wide, with a flat, barren bottom. Only grass and small bushes grow. The river meanders through it with many tentacles. Up at the right side, we glimpse the first glacier. Between Mount Kitchener and Mount Alberta, the front of Stutfield Glacier hangs over the edge, turning the mountain side into a blue and white spectacle.
The road has to climb another step up into yet another flat-bottomed barren valley, only this one is a lot less wide. There are avalanche warning signs. This indeed looks a dangerous bit. In the distance loom several glaciers, explaining the name of the road. The closest to the road is Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefield. It crawls into the valley on the right side. Across, on the left, is Icefield Centre. Offering information, exhibitions, food, and lodging, it is also the point where guided tours onto the glacier start. The place is filled to the brim with tourists: teenagers on school trips, Japanese on world tours, and, for whatever reason, more Dutch people. Strangely enough, no Germans. They are probably off hiking somewhere. I only stop because I need some postcards.
A road leads to the toe of the glacier (as it is apparently called). It doesn’t go very far and the place it ends at doesn’t look very exciting. Plus, there are dozens of buses creeping up the road. So I skip that and rather drive on. It also starts raining, snowing even, though not very seriously.
At Sunwapta Pass, elevation 2030 m and not labelled at all, we cross from Jasper National Park into Banff National Park and from the source area of the Athabasca River to the source of another old friend, the North Saskatchewan River. At the parking lot for the trail head to Parker Ridge, a huge raven is hopping around eyeballing people (or people’s eyeballs, even). He looks like he would love to start a conversation.
The road goes down again for real now. You can stop and have a look at Bridal Veil Falls which aren’t very impressive, but the parking lot is full, nonetheless. Which proves that names work. In order to avoid tight serpentines, the road runs into a wide side valley and turns in a huge circle, probably three hundred metres in diameter. (If you want to see how this is done properly, I can recommend Trollstigen, which has about the same amount of traffic from people with inadequately large vehicles.)
At the bottom of the descent, the valley gets flat and barren yet again for a bit. Here is a question, though: Did the river make the valley or did the valley make the river? Probably a bit of both.
Eventually The North Saskatchewan River turns east. You can follow it on a separate highway leading to Rocky Mountain House, an old fur trading post and starting point of many an expedition into the mountains. The Icefields Parkway switches into the valley of Mistaya River instead and climbs up again.
The mountains here have a distinct Matterhorn style, but their peaks are covered in clouds (but then, Matterhorn’s peak usually is covered in clouds, too, so that works). It starts raining again. Waterfowl Lake looks inviting for a stop, but the lots are all closed.
At the next pass, a short road turns off to the Box Summit trail head. This seems to be the highest point and it starts snowing heavily for a couple of minutes. The trail is supposed to lead to magnificent views. It runs through a snow field and is very muddy. The clouds, which up here are very close, make any view rather boring, anyhow, so I skip this trail, too.
The road now goes down again. On this south-east side of the Rockies, there is still plenty of snow left. Bow Lake even is still frozen over. Its parking lot has its very own raven, too, which watches two bikers switch into their weather clothes. Good thing I have a motor car.
Around this point, mountain fatigue sets in. You can only watch so many mountains and feel awed. I pass a MAN truck with Swiss places from Valais. Why are people bringing their own cars across the ocean?
Shortly before the settlement of Lake Louise, the parkway joins the Trans-Canada Highway. It is currently being twinned, ie., being turned into a divided highway. In this process, it is also being fenced in and equipped with several animal crossing bridges.
Lake Louise turns out to be a tiny village pretty much exclusively catering to tourists. Most buildings are resorts and have a mock Swiss architecture of wood and logs. It is a bit away from actual Lake Louise in a forest. From here, I wanted to take the scenic alternative to the T.C.H., but I miss the exit and instead have to endure an endless motorway construction site.
Eventually, the highway through Kootenay National Park branches off. It has a set of barriers at its start that promises an interesting road. It goes up for quite a bit, far above the valley which is very deep and steep. Once the valley calms down a bit, the highway descends to its bottom again. It reaches Vermillion Pass at 1640 m. This time, it is properly signed as the Continental Dived.
From here on we follow Vermillion River through a valley that has seen a huge fire in 2003. Started by lightning, the park authorities let it burn for a bit, as they have figured out that these fires are important for maintaining the ecosystem. Only when it threatened to skip across the pass down into the Banff area did they stop it.
Eventually both Vermillion River and the road reach Kootenay River. The valley here is very wide. The road is lined on both sides with a wide grass strip, presumably to protect drivers from suddenly appearing animals and vice versa. There are quite a few deer grazing by the road in fact.
Settler’s Road turns off to the left. It keeps following the Kootenay and I wonder for a moment if I should have taken it. Instead I stick to the highway which climbs out of the valley to Sinclair Pass. Up at the pass is a small lake and then the road falls steeply down again. The descent starts with a brake check area and features two emergency runaway lanes. I am very tempted to try one of these, but it is rather hard to get out of their loose gravel surface again.
The valley gets ever more deep, with vertical walls on both sides. At one point, a rockfall has occurred and workers are busy removing it. A bit down the road, an ambulance is parked.
We reach Radium Hot Spring Pools, which are exactly what their name suggests. They are separated from the village Radium Hot Springs by a rock barrier at the end of the valley with only a passage maybe ten metres wide. Thereafter, the valley grows wide open very suddenly. Down, beyond Radium Hot Springs lies the Columbia Valley. The village, again, serves mostly visitors. It has oodles of motels and hotels and offers plenty of holiday homes.
Before the village is the exit from Kootenay National Park. The total tally of large animals seen in the park: twelve deer and one black bear with two cubs.
Columbia Valley is shielded from rain through the Rocky Mountains in the east and Purcell Mountains in the west. It thus is very dry and feels more like something you would find in California. Subsequently, it is resort country catering specifically for golfers. There are advertisement board for holiday homes (part ownership starting at $ 35,000) everywhere. One golf course follows another. At Invermere, a golf club offers lady’s night every Thursday. Sounds a bit patronizing to me.
The valley has a strange, messy feeling to it. The landscape is very hilly. There are conifer trees, dry, brown grass, and many open places with just grey dirt. Houses and sheds are seemingly placed at random everywhere.
At the entrance to Fairmont Hot Springs lies Funtasia Fun Land. Yes, it is that kind of place. Although, one has to admit that Fairmont has the grocery store most closely resembling a proper one I have seen so far west of Quebec. They sell wine and beer and even have a limited selection of beer by the bottle. Apart from that, Fairmont is a tiny village full of resorts and holiday homes. It also features Riverside Golf Course which is deceivingly named as it actually lies by the roadside.
The road crosses over Columbia River and climbs up to avoid Columbia Lake, a long small lake filling the valley floor. Once the lake is over, it climbs down again and passes through the village of Canal Flats which seems to mostly consist of a giant timber storage area.
Then follows a bit of wilderness, which is followed by farmland. The valley turns very wide, maybe fifteen kilometres between the mountains. There are Ta Ta Creek and Wasa, both of which I shall not deem worth a joke. Actually, by this point I am too tired to come up with any. There have been several construction sites along the road causing delays and driving within a convoy which is never fun.
To make things even better, after Wasa follows another site. They are resurfacing the road along an 18 km stretch. This mode of construction is really crap idea. Basically, they take a very long stretch of road, speed limit it to seventy and then work at three or four spots. Which means you have to stop and wait three or four times, collecting ever so more slow vehicles along the way. Takes a lot of discipline not to re-enact an old ad of the German railways.
Fort Steel Heritage Town sounds like it might be worth a visit. It is a bit late, though, and what you see from the road doesn’t look all that thrilling either. Instead, I just push on to Cranbrook, today’s destinations.
Beer of the day: Kootenay True Ale (which I would describe as an honest ale made by Columbia Brewery.)