Moose Tour part 2 - The Rockies
Day 8: Rampart Creek to Edith Cavell
After a breakfast of granola with yoghurt and fruit, plus a plate-sized American pancake that one of the cyclists made, I brushed my teeth at the river behind the sauna and we all put our bags into the bus at 9am. Unfortunately due to the full moon the clear night sky hadn't been a blanket of stars, which was a shame. Our early morning exercise was a ten-minute climb up the steep slope behind the hostel to be rewarded with far-reaching views down the valley in both directions, across the road to the river plain and the forests and mountains on the other side of that. It'd be a wonderful place to be at sunrise, if one was willing to scramble up that slope in the half-light of predawn.
We left after this and continued along the Icefields Parkway, waving to the cyclists as we passed them. As we crossed from Banff NP into Jasper National Park, Ryan pointed out Snow Dome, so called because part of the Columbia Icefield covers the dome-shaped top of it. The mountain is on the Continental Divide and is considered to be a hydrological apex of three oceans: water from it flows into the Columbia River (which drains into the Pacific Ocean), the Athabasca River (to the Arctic) and the North Saskatchewan River (to the Atlantic via Hudson Bay). We drove round the Big Bend, a huge hairpin turn created in order for the road to be able to ascend the steep climb that is now known simply as Big Hill, and stopped for photos at the viewpoint on said hill.
The Athabasca Glacier was next, one of the six principal 'toes' of the 125-square-mile Columbia Icefield and the only one that's within easy walking distance of the road. There are specially-designed snow coaches that carry people up onto the glacier itself, but we just walked the trail to the leading edge of it. There was a big blue ice cave on the other side of the creek, which was an opaque whitey-grey colour. It was difficult, at least for me, to get a sense of scale and an impression of the size, so I wasn't as awe-inspired as I'd hoped, even though the ice wasn't too far in front of us. Don't get me wrong, it was great there, I just couldn't feel my smallness in comparison to this huge force of nature. Is that a weird thing to want to experience?
Information boards around the trail provided lots of interesting things to read. There were several warning people not to walk onto the glacier, including one about a boy falling into a crevasse and dying of hypothermia in 2001 "just meters from where you're standing". The illustrated crying face creeped me out. The glacier recedes a few metres a year, so we were walking on a lunar landscape dotted with tiny alpine shrubs we had to avoid stepping on and crushing, and there were little stone markers around the trail saying "The glacier was here in [year]". I'm not confident I can identify moraines (ridges of rock, sand and gravel deposited by a glacier as it recedes) after having only a few pointed out, but if the towering walls we came closer to on our return to the car park were lateral moraines (the old sides of the glacier), then only then was I able to get a better idea of how far above my head the ice would have once been, and how thick is still is in some places.
After about an hour there we drove on and stopped ten minutes later at the roadside Tangle Falls, where we scrambled up another steep slope to the top and had lunch on the rocks. It was great, the view was wonderful... the people on the road below, however, probably weren't so pleased by our being in their photographs. Haha! We had leftover curry and rice from the night before to put in some of the wraps, which was yummy =]
We saw mountain goats on the way to Athabasca Falls, which at 23m aren't very high compared to other waterfalls in the Rockies, but the size of the river means it's one of the most powerful. It was quite mesmerising, just watching the roaring water. The river had carved out a short gorge with several large potholes. We walked through the "Time Tunnel", another short gorge that the river had long since abandoned. That was impressive, with walls rising metres above our heads and potholes big enough to have several tree trunks lying in a pool in the bottom.
Our penultimate stop for the day was at a quiet little lake for a free fish pedicure. I kept my shoes on. We stayed for about twenty minutes then continued up to Jasper for dinner supplies. The Mount Edith Cavell Wilderness Hostel is located about 23km south of the town, up a winding mountain road that's closed during the winter. It lacked the same modern comforts and conveniences that the hostel at Rampart Creek lacked, but it felt a lot more basic. The buildings at RC were much nicer: cleaner, more comfortable and cozy, and even the composting toilet huts were decent. The ones here were tiny dark leaning sheds just big enough to turn around in, and they did stink.
Before dinner, which was being cooked by the three German girls in the group, some of us made the short walk across the road to the Tonquin Valley Trail, which led to a bridge over the stream that empties Cavell Lake, and a nice view over the lake to Mount Edith Cavell itself. We continued a little further and found some paddocked horses, then returned to German-style 'baked' potatoes, Waldorf salad and steak (Bratwurst sausages were too expensive). Yum! I'll definitely be making the potatoes and Waldorf salad - their version uses cream, lemon/lime juice, sugar and mandarins with lettuce, apple and walnuts, instead of mayo. I helped clear up before going to pay, when I found out that they weren't allowed to take debit cards, only credit card or cash, so thankfully I hadn't bought anything in Jasper and had just enough cash to pay. It seems the manager at Rampart Creek had been nice to everyone and hadn't said anything, though I'd had to use my UK card because my Canadian one isn't a Visa. Our guide should have said something - he does this trip every week - or Moose should let people know on the itinerary.
I'd happily stay at the Rampart Creek hostel again, but I was glad we only stayed one night at Edith Cavell. Ah well. We had marshmallows round the campfire again before bed.
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