Banff to Jasper
After spending five days in Banff, we left this stunning national park for the next one, Jasper. Today’s highlight was the road which connects two national parks: The 280km long Icefields Parkway.
On both sides of this parkway the majestic peaks of mountains continued and the parkway climbed up to 2’088m of altitude.
The major attraction of this road is the humongous Colombia Glacier. When we reached, the stadium-size parking lot was booming with buses, over-sized camping cars (like ours) and other cars. The park center itself was worse and packed with people from all kind of places. It was simply a zoo!
Here we encountered again the same Californian couple whom we met at Lake Louise the day before. They were dashing out to get on a shuttle bus and walk on the glacier. Even though there were many other attractions to “experience” the glacier, we run away from this touristic zoo!
Living in Switzerland and having hiked on one of the largest glaciers, Aletcher Glacier (900m in depth!) or having skied on many times (Philippe), it was not, well, exciting enough. Nevertheless, the vastness of this glacier was impressive!
Once we arrived in Jasper, we narrowly got one of a few spots left in the Whistlers Campground! After securing our spot for spending the night, we rushed into the town and organized the logistics for our upcoming two-day hike of Skyline Trail, talking to the Parks Canada people, buying the map and arranging the transport. Looking forward to this hike!
Today’s evening meal was special: our first BBQ!
Philippe was happy grilling a huge piece of meat (Yasuko grilling corns), finally proper camping with fire, while Yasuko thought it was a boy-thing!
Fly, Hike & Travel. 