Nashville Wife

Lifestyle Blog | Recipes | Home Decor | Money Saving | DIY Wedding Planning

Athabasca Glacier

Athabasca Glacier

by 22 Comments

Have y’all been enjoying seeing photos from our trip to the Canadian Rocky Mountains? For those who have missed past post, here are all the links:

Canadian Rockies Day 1
Canadian Rockies Day 2
Canadian Rockies Day 3
Canadian Rockies Day 4
      Lake Louise
      Moraine Lake 
Canadian Rockies Day 5
      Icefields Parkway Part 1

And now for my next post, our tour of the Athabasca Glacier. This was certainly one of the highlights of our trip.

After spending the day driving along the Icefields Parkway, we stopped at the Glacier View Inn for the night. We dropped our bags off in our room; grabbed our winter jackets,
hats, and gloves; and embarked on our glacier tour. A coach bus took us
partway up the mountain to a transfer station, where we boarded a giant
Ice Explorer, which took us up onto the Athabasca glacier.

The Ice Explorer is a very unique vehicle that is able to climb up extremely steep slopes while gripping the ice. Aside from the one used by the United
States Military up in Alaska, they are all currently being used on the
Athabasca Glacier.

From
the hotel, the glacier looks very small, but once you’re up there, you realize just how massive it really is. As deep as the Eiffel Tower is tall, the Athabasca Glacier is approximately 6 km (3.7 miles) long and is receding at a rate of about 5 meters per year.

On the way up, we passed pine trees that are 300-700 years old. The growing season is only 60-90 days, so despite their age, the trees are quite skinny. They aren’t
very tall, either.

When the Ice Explorer completed its climb up the glacier, we were able to hope out and walk around. It was crazy to think just how thick the ice was below us.

Although the park officials were unable to legally prevent visitors from walking outside of the designated area, we were not about to wander off after hearing about the danger of falling into a crevasse (a deep, narrow opening in the ice).

Although it was cold, we took our gloves off and took the opportunity to try some fresh glacier water.

After the glacier excursion, we spent a few minutes on the Glacier Skywalk, a transparent platform jutting out from the edge of a mountain. It was a bit disappointing, as it didn’t actually look out over the glacier but over a valley a few miles away from the glacier. If you’re afraid of heights, you may not enjoy the skywalk, as it hangs 30 meters (98 feet) in mid air.

 

 

Check out this video that we made on top of the the glacier:

 

Icefields Parkway Part 1

by 13 Comments

On day five of our Rocky Mountain adventure, we woke up at the crack of dawn and began our road trip up the Icefields Parkway. Cell service cut out almost immediately and would not return until the following day, so I pulled out the list I had made of all the stops along the way. The signage was pretty good, but we still would have missed some of the highlights had it not been for my handy list.Our first stop was Herbert Lake. It was just off the road and definitely worth the 30 seconds it took to walk from the car to the lake. Simply beautiful.

We hopped back in the car and continued driving, passing the Hector Lake viewpoint after 10 minutes but deciding not to stop. About 10 minutes past that was a pull-off that provided a fabulous view of Crowfoot Glacier. Naturally, we snapped a picture from both sides of the road.

 

Another short drive (about 8 minutes) and we arrived at Simpson’s Num-Ti-Jah Lodge. My family and I stayed there when I was about eight years old, so I have great memories of that place.

The lodge sits on the rocky shores of beautiful Bow Lake, making it a popular stop for tourists. When I visited as a child, it was an especially chilly summer, and the surrounding mountains were still covered in ice and snow, like a winter wonderland. I remember it vividly.

Our next stop was Peyto Lake (another 10 minutes up the road). Named after turn-of-the-century guide Bill Peyto, Peyto Lake is known as “the bluest lake in the Rockies.”

Also in the same location is Bow Summit, the highest point on the Icefields Parkway (2,135 meters/7,000 feet elevation).

After a 25 minute drive, we stopped at Mistaya Canyon. We walked 0.5 miles down a steep incline and arrived at this spot.

If you look closely, you’ll see the powerful current rushing through the canyon. Truly an incredible sight! There were additional trails we could have hiked, but we were on a tight
schedule, as we had to make it to our glacier tour by 4:00pm. We made the grueling trek up the steep hill and back to our car.

A short five minute drive along the main road brought us to Saskatchewan River Crossing, the first oasis with gas and food that we had hit since Lake Louise. Still no cell reception, though.

Twenty-five minutes later, we made our way up the “Big Hill” and pulled over on the side of the road for a breathtaking view of the North Saskatchewan Valley.

 

By that point, we were only 10 minutes away from our destination for the night, a large building that houses the Glacier View Inn and the Columbia Icefield Glacier Discovery Centre.

I had called the hotel a few weeks before and booked their very last room that week. What a blessing! It is the only hotel and restaurant for many miles and was the perfect place to stop. But before calling it a night, we still had to take our glacier tour, my most anticipated stop on our entire trip. This has been a long post already, so I’ll have to wait until next time to tell you all about our excursion on the Athabasca Glacier.