Saturday, February 4, 2012

Jasper to Golden: Icefield Parkway

Saturday morning, we left Jasper for one the world's most scenic and beautiful roads - the Icefield Parkway. Before we started south, we fueled up as the next 217 km would be without gas stations.


Icefield Parkway

We entered the park at 10 am and made it to Lake Louise by 4 pm - the road conditions were good but the beautiful landscape requested our stops every now and then. Once, we stopped three times within less than 5 km.

Athabasca Pass

Luckily, some of sights were closed for winter, so we made it still in daylight to our destination.

Mount Edith Cavell

The Columbia Icefield consists of 8 glaciers and sits on the Continental Divide of North America. In summer, you can tour the glaciers with snow coaches - in winter you enjoy them from afar.

There are also the sources of three rivers that flow in three different oceans: the Athabasca River via several other water systems in the Arctic Ocean, the Saskatchewan River via Hudson Bay in the Atlantic Ocean and the Columbia River in the Pacific Ocean.

Viewpoint to Columbia Icefield

Athabasca Glacier

The Weeping Wall

View at Saskatchewan River Crossing

Mount Cephren

We arrived in Lake Louise at the peak of ski-out rush-hour and after a short detour to the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise we continued west back into British Columbia to Golden.

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