Columbia Ice Fields

Saturday June 30 we drove down the Ice Fields Parkway to the Columbian Ice Fields for a tour on the Athabasca Glacier.  The scenery on the way down with the GIGANTIC mountains was amazing.  Uncle Mike was correct when he said “after you have been to the Canadian Rockies our mountains around here just look like hills”. 

We splurged and acted “tourista” and rode the Ice Coach out onto the Columbia glacier.  It was quite an experience.  First you get on a bus and ride out the road toward the glacier.  The have it marked for years when the glacier still came out to various spots along the road.  I am a firm believer in global warming now when you see how much smaller the Glacier is now than in 1905 and 1950.  In 1864 it was all the way covering where the highway and big visitor’s center is now.

They take you out about one mile and tell you lots of interesting facts about glaciers and geology of the area and then drop you off at your snow coach.  From here the ride really gets exciting. The coaches are on 6 HUGE tires that are only inflated to about 15 psi.  It holds about 50 or 60 people but ours was not full.  (all of the Japanese people were on their own coach!) 

The driver of the snow coach tells you more interesting facts like each snow coach costs about $1 million and there are only 23 of them in the world.  This tour company owns 22 of them and uses them on the glacier and the US Army owns one and uses it for research in the artic.  At one point you go down a 18% grade road that is made right on the glacier out to where they let you get out and wander around for about 25 minutes.  The top speed is 14 miles per hour – as you can imagine the driver is really using the gears both going down and back up.  The road is built on the glacier covered with gravel and the driver said it moves 1 meter (39”) per year down and to the right.

We got out and some nice person took our picture by the Canadian flag.  As you can see it was windy and cold up there.  Very interesting tour.  Better than the 2 or 6 hour walk out on the actual glacier from the bottom (toe they call it) tour choice.  I would not want to fall into a cravass.

Back at the tour center we pulled another “touron” move and had our picture taken with Moose Mountie and Bear Mountie. 

We enjoyed the exhibits about the history and exploration of the area.  Those trappers and early mountain climbers and railroad developers were really fearless.  The Canadian Rockies for tourism was first developed by the Canadian Railroad because after they built the railroad they needed more ways to make it pay than just freight so they built these beautiful hotel/resorts that catered to rich Europeans and folks from back East.  The railroad owned the resorts and then also got their money to get them to the resorts on the railway.  Banff Lodge and the Hotel at Lake Louise were two of the fancy spots for fancy people in the early 1900’s.   

Another interesting thing about the Columbia Glacier is it is one of only two confluences in the world where rivers from one spot flow to three different oceans.  (the other one is in Yellowstone)  The Athabasca River flows out and joins other rivers until it empties into the Artic.  The Saskatchewan River flows into the Great Lakes and to the Atlantic.  The third river which I forgot the name of flows out and joins the Columbia and enters into the Pacific ocean.  (Any of you who want a more precise account of this can look it up at your leisure on the internet :}

On the way home we had lunch at Sumwapta Falls. 

There were three picnic tables in a little area near the trees and we were at the one closest to the forest.  A three generation family group of about 20 oriental people were at the middle table just chattering and making lots of noise with their small children.  All of a sudden one of the young adult fathers got all excited and was pointing past our table up into the woods and when we turned around to look there was a black bear just munching along there having his lunch as well only about 15 or 20 yards away from our table.  You can tell we packed up in a hurry and made our way back to the car by the fact Dad did not even stop long enough to take a picture or it! The bear just leisurely wandered all the way around the parking lot along the edge of the woods and gave lots of tourists some excitement until he finally moved back further into the woods.