Moraine Lake
Posing at Moraine Lake
Jasper, Alberta
With clearer skies promised at dawn, we get up at 6am and drive to Moraine Lake, half an hour away. Despite the early hour, many other tourists are there as the sun starts revealing the astounding views around us. We follow the trail up a rock pile to look down on the lake from above, its turquoise waters a thing of real beauty. By the time we get back to Lake Louise, it too has returned to fabled splendour, the grey skies of yesterday replaced by reflective blue revealing the majesty we had been expecting.
With a long drive ahead of us we skip breakfast at the hotel, grabbing coffee and bagels at a supermarket instead, before setting off on the 225km drive along the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. One of the world’s most iconic drives it more than lives up to its billing, a dramatic new vista around every bend filling us with delight and wonder as we go.
Both Hector Lake and Bow Lake are like scenes from a book – perfect and overwhelming – but cloud closes in as we reach Peyto Lake, one of the must-see stops, and we can barely see the car in front of us. Pulling into the car park we wind down the window and ask a fellow traveller if we should attempt the hike to the lakeside but she’s blunt in her assessment. “It’s totally socked!”, she grimaces at us, saving us a thirty minute detour but compounding our disappointment at the conditions.
Coman at Moraine Lake
For the next 30kms we’re despondent, the glories of this most incredible road shrouded from sight, our once-in-a-lifetime journey threatening to become a very expensive folly. At the roadside stop of Saskatchewan Crossing we pull over for coffee, trying to be sanguine about the situation but frustrated by the cloud that surrounds us. With no option but to continue we set off again and suddenly, miraculously, five minutes later the grey wall parts and ahead of us, for the rest of our journey, deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine frame everything in glorious, rich, spectacular colours.
Valley view from Moraine Lake
Our next stop is the Columbia Icefields Discovery Centre, at the foot of the Athabasca Glacier. Pulling on winter clothes we take our place in line and are ferried to the monstrous vehicle that takes us up and onto the glacier itself, its enormous tyres ensuring we can travel onto the ice and be deposited in front of the huge blue-white wall ahead of us. The ice has retreated massively over the past 150 years and global warming means it will disappear faster and faster in years to come, but we still marvel at the gigantic icesheet before us and fill our water bottles from the trickling streams of pure water around us.
Back on the road we stop first at the Skywalk over the canyon - a glass bridge extending out hundreds of feet above the floor below - and then at both the Athabasca and Sunwapita waterfalls before arriving at the town of Jasper, at the end of the Icefields Parkway, at 5.30pm. A pleasant but nondescript place we drive on through, and head out past the stunning Patricia Lake to our hotel, the Pyramid Lake Resort.
Situated on the shores of the eponymous lake, it comprises various Alpine like buildings and also boasts a hot tub we take full advantage of. Dinner that night is taken in the restaurant overlooking the lake, with a glass of wine looking up at the stars before bed.
