August 7 Jasper to Banff

As part of the Rocky Mountaineer Circle Journey, RM is providing the transportation from Jasper to Banff.  It's actually a tour run by Brewster Sightseeing, the same group that provided yesterday's Maligne Lake tour. We have high hopes since this is one of the most beautiful mountain highways. 

We have to leave this great room in the Jasper Lodge.  A great place to spend a couple of nights.

Technical note: Today was hazy -- those Canadian wildfires were having an effect.  I have used Photoshop Haze Removal, and it does a pretty good job, but it does add to posterization of the pictures.  I think it's better this way, but you may choose to disagree.

Since our bags would be traveling on the coach with us, we had to have them ready an hour early.  So we had time to kill in the lobby.

And the swimming pool.  We didn't use it -- just a little cool for us.

And our bus is now ready.

First stop along the way is Athabasca Falls, which makes sense since it's the Athabasca River and we're headed to the Athabasca Glacier, which provides water for the river.

Fun geographical fact: The Columbia Icefields Parkway, on which we are traveling (Canada Route 93) is one mountain valley west of Maligne Lake.  Except for the 10,000 foot mountains in between, we're right next door.

For Brewster Sightseeing, the bus drivers are also the guides, and they do a wonderful job. They know the history, the geography and all of the good stories.  One item proclaimed by today's driver as the best in the world is the Nanaimo Bar, and the best of these are sold right here in Alberta Canada. So at our morning stop I bought one.  Looked good from the outside, but besides chocolate (very good) and cream cheese (very good) it contains coconut (extremely bad).  Guess I should have read the ingredients on the label...oops, no label.  I guess making Nanaimo Bars is literally a cottage business in Alberta.

Also, I don't know how to pronounce Nanaimo but fortunately this is not a podcast.

Panorama at a scenic pull off along the Parkway.  I went overboard on panoramas today.

The Athabasca Glacier.  We visited here in 1989 and noticed two big differences this time. 1) The glacier has gotten smaller, but I can't find any pictures from 1989 that compare directly with our 2023 pictures. I remember that we walked easily to the glacier front from the parking lot back then.  You can see the long path curving off from the parking lot here. Google tells me that the glacier is retreating about 5 meters per year, so it's about 560 feet from where we saw it in 1989.  Felt like more, but part of it is the shifting glacial moraine. 2) There's a lot more development. There's a visitor center that didn't exist then -- this was just a wide spot in the road.  There's also a Glacier Explorer to drive you right up onto the ice.  We had to walk back then.

Panorama of the mountains, the Columbia Icefield, the glaciers and the Parkway.

Now we're talking.  Look at the size of the those tires. Evidently they wear out quickly. Note to self -- Business opportunity: Recapping Ice Explorer tires.

The glacier face, with a pond in front of it.

After a thrilling slow motion ride up the hill, down the hill and back up the hill, we arrive at a safe spot to get out, along with about 5 other buses worth of people. But there's plenty of ice available.

Panorama of glacier.  We dipped a hand into the melt stream you see on the far left.  Very cold.  Some people were capturing the water in a bottle and drinking it.  It should be OK, but our guide did point out that the silt found in glacial runoff can be a laxative.  I passed.

As we drove back to the Ice Explorer loading/unloading spot, I was able to take this picture of the road here. It's a very steep grade, taken at dead slow by the explorer buses.  "World's slowest roller coaster."

The Visitor Center, cafeteria, gift shop, ticket sales and restrooms.

I'm amazed at the goats, and particularly the little ones.  They're probably just months old, yet following mom up and down the hillside where one false step and you'll roll about a thousand feet down the hill.

Our final stop: The Columbia Icefields Skywalk.  If the Grand Canyon can have one, so can we. On a tourist attraction built just so they could sell tickets to it, I cautiously walked across the clear glass floor to see what there was to see.  I can report: Nothing.

Yeah, there's a cascade into the river that looks neat. But the view is not significantly different than from the parking lot. There's nothing below the Skywalk that justifies a glass floor.

Lots of people were there -- Pursuit, the parent company of Brewster (I think), sells a package deal for the Explorer and the Skywalk.  Having the Skywalk allows a higher package price.  Canadian entrepreneurship in action.  Pursuit also runs the Visitor Center.

Our hotel for the next two nights, the Rimrock Resort Hotel.  We were bummed that we didn't get assigned into the Banff Springs Hotel, but this was possibly the best room we've ever had.  It was a large room that included two plush leather chairs and a bay window that looked out onto the mountains and the Bow River. We could have spent a month in that room.

Now the complaints, one trivial and one serious.  Trivial: With a view like that, the two chairs were pointed into the room, and not towards the view.  This may harken to olden days when people would sit in their rooms and read things printed on paper.  They needed natural light coming over their shoulder.  As I learned from a desk clerk when mentioning that the 40w bulbs by the bed made reading difficult, she replied "Just turn up the brightness."

Serious: Normally when a tour bus arrives at a hotel, the rooms are pre-assigned, the key packages are built and handed out quickly, perhaps on the bus or at a nearby table. At RRH everybody on the bus had to get in line at the registration desk.  There were 3, later 4, clerks on duty.  By my watch one clerk spent 15 minutes checking a guest in. To them it was as if 40 totally unrelated people arrived in their own cars at the same time. I feel bad for the people at the back of the line, it took them over 30 minutes to get a room. Unacceptable. Brewster and Rocky Mountaineer should demand better.