From Stupendous to Speechless

The road to Jasper is called the Icefield Parkway and we had no idea what we were getting into.  Glacier National Park is named for Glaciers, right? But we didn't see any of aby size.  Here all we saw were snow covered peaks, icefields and glacier after glacier.  Again, our rain luck held out, and although there had been rain in thea rea two days before we arrived, we had sunny, blue skies, the better to see the snow, dark green evergreens, glistening waterfalls, blue, green and smokey glacial pools and braided streams.  

We camped for two nights at the southern end of Jasper and were lucky enough to be two campsites over from an Austrian threesome who layed the bass, guitar and dobro all afternoon.  I even joined them with my banjo.  Very brave for me.

Our first hike was to Parker Ridge, which was straight up through a number of switchbacks to the Saskatchewan Glacier and the headwaters of the S. River.  Can you imagine a cliff's edge full of wildflowers across from which blazed a river of ice leading into a green glacial pool out of which flowed a braided river.  We just had to plop down and enjoy the view.  Of course, we were exhausted at the end of our 6.5 km hike.   However, our congratulations ended very soon after we got back to the camp when we talked to several people who had been, over the course of two days on 17 and 20 km hikes.  Oh well.  All is relative, and I am relatively certain that those hikes were not for us.

The next day we declared a "day off" from our vacation and slept late and hung around to about 11 am.  Then we went on the BEST HIKE ever past a 50-60 foot gorge

through which thundered a series of 7 waterfalls.    The weather was unseasonably hot, about 87 degrees, so of course, nothing stopped me from plunging in to the freezing cold water on several occasions.  (Black bikini undies do look like bathing suit bottoms, right?)  We took lunch and camped out next to the highest falls for a couple of hours, reading and snoozing, until we felt it was time to leave.  How perfect can you get?

 

Oops.  Today was the MOST PEARFECT HIE EVER!  We took a 3.5 hour hike on the Athabasca Glacier which came right down from the Colombia Glacier.  A bit of hisotyr here.  A number of hears ago David and I were in McCarthy, AK and decided to forgo to guided hike on that glacier and took off on our own in sneakers and hiking boots.  Well, we got stuck and had to be talk down after hakcing out steps in the glacier with rocks and become bloodied and torn in the process.  So, when we saw the sign-up sheet for guided hikes on this glacier, we jumped at the chance.

Even though the temperature was about 75 degrees in the parking lot, we loaded up with long underwear, hats, gloves, scraves and hiking boots to which we afixed crampons when we got on the glacier. With our guide Peter and his dog George, we were off.  What a wonderful trip and since words fail,here are the photo.

 

 

 

And you wonder why David is not in more photos?

Tomorrow its off to the rodeo in Jasper!  This should be a more professional rodeo than the others we have been to.  Hopefully there won't be any mutton busting at this one.