The Columbian Icefields glacier experience

Today I got up feeling "finally!".. I have been waiting for this day with great expectations since the time I booked myself into one of Brewster's Icefield tours. Well whoever is coming to this side of the world, this tour is highly recommended. It is breath taking, only you are so awesturck that there is no breath to take!! It is also extremely instructive, with the tour operator, a great guy who obviously enjoyed his job and adored the Rockies with all his heart. Geology, glaciation, history, wildlife and animals all thrown into one enjoyable narrative.

So the trip is on a highway - part of the Trans Canadian Highway that runs coast to coast. It starts off with Banff (4500 feet), through the Icefields (the highest point being about 7000 ft and ends up in Jasper (3500 ft). The Icefields traverse four National Parks in Canada - Banff, Jasper, Koteenay and Yoho, together covering about 20,000 sq km (the largest expanse of glacial ice below the Arctic Circle), declared a world heritage site!! Imagine! And to top it all, there is one more national park and a network of province parks in the Rockies alone in Canada!

Enough of the information! So all lakes and rivers here are a deep turquoise blue in this region because of all the suspended sun from glacier run off refracting incident light at different angles. To see an expanse of bluish water, with white sand on its banks, a green conifer cover, grayish black mountains in the background wreathed in powdery snow - is something else. We passed through Lake Louise, nestled among majestic hills, with the glacier in the background and bordered by the Chateau Lake Loiuse. An aside here - the Fairmont is an 'ishtlye' chain of hotels in all these lovely places; it has the most beautiful, imposing castle at Banff - it completely took my attention when I was looking at Banff from my gondola, I thought it was an actual castle. The Chateau is right by the lake; quite an imposing building. So when it was set up, they imported mountaineers from Switzerland to act as tour guides. At that point it was not so much a chateau as a shed! But to this day, people working at the Chateau wear Swiss livery!

It only got better after that. Passed through many lakes, each unique, nestled within its own valley - Herbert lake, Hector lake, Bow lake (where Bow river that passes through Banff originates), Peyto lake (the most turquoise of all the lakes in the Rockies; when I saw pictures I thought they were photoshopped, but hey they were not!), and finally the Sunwapta lake right by the icefields. Each lake is fed by its own glacier and there are usually rivers originating from them too! There are three main rivers - Bow river, Athabasca river and the Saskatchewan. Between them, these water bodies drain all three main ocean systems that border Canada - the Pacific, Atlantic and the Arctic. Ok enough of geography!

Now for some geology! So after the Rockies came up in a plate collision event, in the Cretaceous, there were repeated ice ages, giving rise to the extensive glacial system. The glacial retreat and movement as a result of historic climate change led to the craggy formations of the Rockies today. It is just amazing! The high uneven-ness makes the area prone to avalanches, that can be upto 300 km/hr. The temperature can drop till -40 deg. And in earlier times before temperature regulated buses on excellent highway roads, there were natives and European explorers trading fur here!
But that feeling is continuing now - that the native history is not recorded at all. Everything, from the interpretation center to all the stories, is from a highly European (Brit or French) viewpoint.

Now finally for the best part of the tour - the Icefields. The comfortable coach we were on is stopped at the Icefields center - a set of buildings in the middle of nowhere with a restraunt and cafeteria (expensive - but of course!). People are transferred onto the Brewaster Ice Explorer. So Brewster has gotten these ice vehicles made (the one extra that was made was bought by the US army in Antarctica!). These vehicles seat about 55 people, and have a driver who also doubles as an interpretive tour guide. There is a short drive atop the glacier, after which you can walk around on the glacier for a while! Phew! Lovely. I somehow expected the ice to be flat! But it was craggy and gravelly, and quite easy to walk on. Surrounded by ice everywhere! Then driven back and join respective tours. It takes in 4 to 5000 people per day throughout summer; it is pretty expensive! I think they are nullifying what they spent on the massive ice explorers - they were close to a million dollars each!

Then to the Sunwapta and Athabasca falls. Fierce, voluminous; reminded me of the Alaknanda near her origin in Nepal! Turquoise blue, plunging down into craggy ravine, and spreading out in the near plain, suddenly calm and at peace. Wondrous.

To end my day I also went to Whistler's mountain close to Jasper which has a tramway till the top. Met this Chilean biologist on the same tour as me and we ended up going together to this place; I touched snow for the first time! So fluffy yet crunchy! lol.. at the top of Whistlers, there is a 2 km hiking trail, quite steep; but the view was simply grand. A 360 degree panorama of snow capped peaks with a smattering of cloud; and a green valley; numerous lakes each shimmering its peculiar hue all over, with Jasper nestled in the middle (It is built in the shape of a 'J', imagine, I was quite amazed!). The temperature here was close to zero and because of a sharp wind, the 'feeling temperature', negative! My ears and nose almost froze and by the time I came down I was just waiting for a regulated environment!

The day basically exceeded my expectations! And I cant wait for tomorrow. Oops, it IS tomorrow. Time to sleep!