The Rockies Road South

Jasper was a gem of a place. Our first ride out on the bikes presented us with a black bear, first on the shoreline and then swimming in the river, what luck! We know we have enough in life, but when it comes to nature we’re not sure we’ll ever have enough of it!

We really liked Jasper, felt a lot more real than Banff and being much further north, it was quieter. After seeing the bear we continued, riding past lakes, heading towards Maligne Canyon. Quite a steep climb to get there but what really took us aback was a park ranger asking if we’d seen a family of Grizzlies in the woods that had caused an ‘incident’. Thankfully, maybe, we hadn’t. The rangers had only gone and closed the area we were cycling in, as a precaution! Saw plenty of Elk though and there was another Railway Children waving incident to boot. Maligne was an incredibly deep slot canyon, water raging through a long way below, don’t drop the phone!

Medicine Lake is a spectacle; the lake literally empties annually as a result of a limestone cave system below. When the springs feeding it freeze in winter, the lake continues to drain and empties, only to refill at Spring melt. That’d be fun to see, as well as the Bald Eagles that nest there. (nest was empty!)

Moose Lake was our key destination though so we hiked through the trees, turning the corner to see a Bull Moose taking afternoon tea in the lake. We called him Mork. Watching that, mesmerised, for a long time wasn’t enough though, a female arrived and they started courting. We called her Mindy. A chap there, about 8 of us were around to see it, had been going there for 35 years and had only seen it a few times. It was quite enchanting just to watch and take in, before they wandered off into the woods for who knows what!

Back tracking south down the Icefields Parkway is a different experience in terms of what we saw. The Columbia Icefield and the glaciers are more visible from that direction and the enormity of their cascades, more impactful (if that’s possible!) We hiked a few more areas, Athabasca Falls with its thunderous waterfall dropping into the gorge and the Stutfield Glacier view point.

Yoho National Park was next, great name eh! That meant we entered British Columbia, our 9^th province. A stop at Kicking Horse Pass for the famous Spiral Tunnels, to see three parts of the same train, at the same time, was in order. The tunnels were designed as a safe alternative to the steep slopes that were causing trains to career off the rails into the valleys. Ah the dawn of H&S! The figure of 8 design was an engineering feat, taken from tunnel designs in the Alps, for the same reason.

A visit down Yoho Valley Road took us to Takakkaw Waterfall and then we were onto Golden. A ski area (actually, everywhere seems to be a ski area) but with loads of mountain bike trails in the summer. The town itself had a great buzz too. It has a fabulous, covered bridge, completely restored using traditional methods by volunteers from all over the World. Their Roxy Cinema was showing Barbie and Oppenheimer at the same time, wonder how many found their choice of film that evening a struggle? Talk about a juxtaposition!  Becoming very trendy, geared to ski, hike bike folks it’s becoming impossible for locals to afford to buy property. Over the past twenty years, we talked to locals, they’ve all seen an influx of second homer money. Handy for winter sports and being relatively close to the US border, it’s a haven for ‘investment’. Sound familiar?

Giving our bodies a break from bikes we had a couple of days at Kinbasket Lake, a stunning blue reservoir of melt water. We even manged a swim in it! Cycling along the edge of the waters we could see the felled trees to make way for the reservoir and the Columbia Icefield from the other side, equally impressive as the other side!

Nearby is Loop Brook Trestles, (also known as Rogers Pass National Historic Site) where, same as the Spiral Tunnels, ingenuity was needed to have a safe rail passage to the west of Canada as decreed by the 1^st Prime Minister of Canada in 1871. Built in 1885, the originally figure of 8 structure was wooden and thus precarious, blighted by avalanches and decay so steel and stone shored it up in 1906. Ten years later it was all closed as a tunnel replaced the section. I guess that how quickly technology to do these things developed in those days. The towers still stand, and I thought the original pictures on the loop were super (and scary for those involved) From this point we were starting to emerge from the grasp of The Rockies and we headed into another area, The Kootenays and Glacier National Park. These were landscapes as spectacular to those we’d seen, on roads less travelled.

Jigsaw continues to be tormented by squirrels but she enjoys the play. We’ve had some great park ups so she can’t complain! She has however taken to rolling in a lot of dust so changes colour, as does the fabrics in the van 😦