Jasper NP, Alberta --- The Icefields Parkway

Lake Louise and Jasper are separated by one of the most scenic roads in the world – the Icefields Parkway.  The road twists along the Canadian Rockies and curves past various glaciers, glacial lakes, and streams.  It’s only 143 miles long but it can take a whole day to drive it if you stop for all the scenic turnouts.

There are 17 glacial areas along the Parkway, but the most accessible is the Columbia Icefield – an enormous 125-square-mile sheet of ice that feeds six glaciers.  It’s so accessible that you can drive right up to the Athabasca Glacier and walk right on it.  In the photo below, the Athabasca Glacier is the large sheet of ice on the left.  It used to flow as far as the highway, but has receded significantly in the past few decades.  It still has a pretty steady flow of about 50 feet per year at the bottom edge (called the toe).

Up at the top, where the ice spills out from the icefall, the glacier speed is a much faster 400 feet/year.

As I mentioned, there are dirt parking lots right at the base of the Athabasca Glacier and you can walk right up to it with very little effort.  But if you want to drive on the glacier, you are out of luck unless you take a ride on one of the specially outfitted Ice Explorer buses.  These buses have been ferrying tourists out to the thickest part of the glacier for decades.  They used to use old converted greyhound buses with snowmobile treads, but now they have state-of-the-art vehicles with big balloon tires (that do less damage to the glacier surface).    

Once the bus arrives at the thickest part of the glacier, they let people out for about 20 minutes to walk around and take photos.  They don’t let you walk just anywhere, though – they have an area ringed with safety cones that you aren’t supposed to go past.  This is because glaciers can be pretty dangerous; a few feet of snow may cover a crevasse hundreds of feet deep.  Put your foot in the wrong place and down you go!

But our guide said that they do a safety check of the area every morning and adjust the cones accordingly.  I have to say that walking around on the glacier wasn’t really any different from walking around on snow.  Except there were some exposed places where you could see the ethereal blue tint of the ice beneath your feet – the only reminder that you have nothing below you except a thousand feet of ice.