Banff, Lake Louise & The Columbia Icefield

We finally made it to Banff!
We checked in for 2 nights at the Tunnel Mountain Campground. Again, we were in grizzly country. Our first afternoon we went for a mountain bike ride on some fun trails that wound down to the town main street. We checked with the local information hosts and got a trail map for some of the best rides around. The favorite was the Lake Minnewanka trail just outside of town.

We started the ride around 12pm because we were told to only be on the trail during the middle of the day in order to lessen the chance of running into a grizzly bear. We rode equip with bear spray and bear bells attached to our camelbacks.

The ride was a rolling out and back that followed the shoreline of the lake. It was a beautiful view of the lake which reminded us of the blue waters of Lake Tahoe. For the first 20 - 30 minutes of the ride we saw only two people. We even started to get nervous that maybe we had gone out the farthest on the trail for the day, and would certainly startle a bear. Eventually we ran in to a number of hiking groups, so we became more comfortable with the trail.

Just before we had planned to turn back on the trail, we came across an intersection to another trail that ran up the mountainside away from the lake. There was a large sign posted with the symbol of a bike with a line running through it. This trail had been closed for the time to cyclists due to grizzly bear activity. We wish we had brought a camera so that we could have snapped a photo of what this sign looked like. It was a drawing of a large grizzly bear face with blood coming out of its mouth...needless to say this was enough for us to decide to turn back shortly after seeing the sign.

All in all it was one of My (Becca) favorite rides so far.

Lake Louise

We packed up and left Tunnel Mountain early. Stopped in Banff for a coffee, and hit the road heading up about 45 minutes to Lake Louise. This is the home of one of Alberta's best ski hills. Although the snow had melted from the trails for the season, the sight of the lake was spectacular. Across from the ski mountain sits Lake Louise, just beyond the lake you get a glimpse of the Victoria Glacier. In my opinion, this was the first actual "Glacier" that we saw. It was obviously ice covered with snow and appeared to be 300 or more feet thick. With the lake as smooth as glass that early in the morning the photo taking was spectacular.

We didn't stay too long and on our way out of town we stopped up for some more photo taking at Morraine Lake which sits up above Lake Louise at about 6,000 feet. This morning was a chilly one and overcast. The clouds sat very low and you could tell that at the top of the mountain there was a sprinkling of fresh snow. We left morraine lake about mid day and headed north along the icefields parkway toward the columbia ice field.

The Athabasca Glacier
We arrived at the Columbia Icefields Campground just after 3pm and set up camp. The temperature was the coldest we had experienced yet. Next, we headed over to the visitor center to inquire about booking a hiking tour out on the glacier for the next morning. All of the guided trips had been booked, so we decided to go check it out on our own. We layered up with pants and jackets and took the trail up to the "toe" of the glacier. At this part there is a large river gushing out from underneath the ice. You can see crevasses running up the toe. There are signs posted everywhere warning you not to walk on the ice and that it is very possible to fall into one of the crevasses.

So...of course, we had to check it out. Andy and Payton went first, and next I tryed it out. It was surprisingly not slippery. It was pretty easy to walk on. We traveled up the toe approximately 100 yards took some photographs, then walked back down. We felt like we were on a different planet. Nothing was growing in the area, and all of the rocks looked very strange. They were very smooth and had scratch marks all over them in the direction of which the glacier had moved years before they were revealed. It was windy and freezing at this point with the cold air from the glacier sinking down past us into the valley. We took off back to the campsite and cooked cheese burgers for dinner!

Next stop Revelstoke?