Canada Canadian Rockies. Again. This is the fifth time in six years. It’s starting to become a bit of a habit. But it is jolly good.
T5 Friday - Travelling through Heathrow T5 is usually such a straightforward and pleasant experience (in so much as airport transit can ever be a pleasant experience), but on this day it turned out to be a bit of a palaver.Our gate was called in terminal 5B, which meant getting the little train thing from terminal 5A. Given that the train only goes about four hundred yards, I don’t understand why there isn’t some sort of walkway. I always seem to spend way longer waiting for the train than it would take to just walk to the other terminal. Anyway, we got the little train to terminal 5B and went to our gate.When we arrived at our gate, I looked at the 150-or-so people waiting to board the plane and I looked out of the window at the enormous 747 parked at our gate and thought I was about to be treated to my first practically deserted flight in ages. We walked down the gangway towards the plane, then at the last minute, got diverted down some stairs and onto the tarmac, where a bus was waiting for us (and where I took this photo of our not-to-be-plane while we were waiting for the bus to leave).Once the bus was full, we went on a ten minute tour of the airport until we ended up in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, next to a much smaller plane. Doh!On the plus side, the much smaller plane was a new 787 Dreamliner, which was really, really nice. Lots of space (helped by the fact that we were flying Premium Economy on this occasion), big windows (that dimmed at the touch of a button - no blinds here) and an excellent infotainment system (although the map view was disappointingly disabled for much of the journey, so we couldn’t monitor our progress).
Sunset/Sunrise We left Heathrow in the mid-afternoon, rising into clouds within a couple of hundred feet of takeoff, and then spent most of the journey flying through this perpetual sunset/sunrise. There was an unbroken blanket of cloud all the way from Heathrow to within about half-an-hour of Calgary, so there was no opportunity to view the magnificent vistas across Iceland, Greenland and the Canadian Northern territories.Having landed in Calgary, we picked up our hire car and headed for our hotel. Usually we stay at the airport on the first night, but for a change we decided to stay at the highly rated Hotel Elan in downtown Calgary, which was very pleasant.
Grid Saturday - Rather than head West from Calgary, directly into the mountains, we headed South into the enormous grid of roads that partitions the farmland in that region. Although there was a dusting of snow on the fields, the roads were pretty clear. Also, at about -1C, it was not particularly cold out either.
Mountains After about an hour of driving, we got our first view of the mountains in the distance. Although the sky was pretty clear where we were, it was looking rather cloudy indeed over the mountains.That’s our hire car in the foreground. As usual, the Jeep Grand Cherokee-or-similar that we’d booked wasn’t available, so they offered to upgrade us to this enormous GMC Yukon XL (same model as last year). 5.3 litre V8, 320bhp. It was a bit of a nightmare in the city, but it felt very much at home out here.
Fence There’s nothing of particular interest in this photo. I just liked the way the fence leads off into the distance. The small town that you can just make out in the distance is Longview.
PIZZA I have no idea why someone would attach a sign saying “PIZZA” to a post out here. It’s not like there was any additional information attached to the adjacent posts identifying the potential location of the pizza. I thought it made a nice photo though.
Highway 40 At Longview we turned West onto highway 40 and headed into the mountains. When we passed this way last year, one of the road bridges had been washed away. And it appeared that they hadn’t got round to fixing it a year later.
Bridge - Or Not The gap behind our car is where the bridge is supposed to be. At least they has managed to take down the dangling guard rails since last year.
Highwood Pass We carried on up highway 40 to the Highwood Pass, which, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is the highest paved road in Canada. Considering the almost complete absence of snow on our way into the mountains, it was also looking quite snowy. This was the view looking North.
Highwood Pass And this was the view looking South. Still, at least the road was nicely ploughed (in fact a snow plough went past a few seconds after I took this photo).
Kananaskis Lower Lake We followed highway 40 all the way to the Smith Dorien Trail, where we diverted to have a quick look at the Kananaskis Lakes. This was the view of the Kananaskis Lower Lake from the dam at the Upper Lake.
Kananaskis Upper Lake And this was the view of the Upper Lake from the dam. There were no reflections on the water because there was a freezing gale blowing. I ventured out slightly onto the dam to get a better photo, but my fingers went numb in a few seconds, so I retreated back to the sheltered area.
Smith Dorien Trail After leaving Kananaskis Lakes, we headed North on the Smith Dorien Trail. Considering the complete absence of snow fifty miles away, there was plenty of it here.
Spray Lakes Reservoir Although most of the Spray Lakes Reservoir wasn’t frozen over, that wasn’t discouraging this intrepid trio from skating on the bit that was. I’ve not idea how you’re supposed to tell if a partially frozen lake is safe to skate on, but this lot were clearly feeling confident.
Banff A while later we arrived at the Delta Banff Royal Canadian Lodge (to give it its full name). It had been refurbished since we were last here and was looking very nice indeed.
Bow Valley Sunday - Thanks to my brain still being on UK time, I was up early on Sunday morning. As breakfast in the hotel didn’t start for a couple of hours, I decided to head out to take a few photos. I took this photo at the bottom of the Bow Valley Falls, which are just out of sight on the left.Considering it was still a couple of hours before sunrise and I couldn’t see much of anything at all, a 30 second shutter has picked up quite a lot of colour and detail in this photo.
Bow Valley Falls This was the view of the Bow Valley Falls. Again, there’s quite a lot of colour and detail in the photo considering it was completely dark.
Mount Norquay After leaving the Bow Valley Falls, I headed up Mount Norquay to see if I could get a photo of Banff itself. Although the sky looked dark at this point, the 30 second exposure picked up the quite a lot of the light of the approaching sunrise, even though it was still about an hour away.Mount Rundle is on the left and Sulphur Mountain is on the right.
Vermilion Lakes On the way back to town, I had to drive past the entrance to the Vermilion Lakes, so I thought I’d be as well to pop in. The pre-dawn sky provided a dramatic backdrop to the frozen lakes.
Vermilion Lakes The sky was just starting to turn orange in the distance with the approaching sunrise. It would have been nice to stay out to see how colourful the sunrise got, but I’d already been out and about for a couple of hours and I was starting to get hungry, so it was time to head back to the hotel for some breakfast.
Morant's Curve Originally we had intended to stay in Banff for a couple of days before heading up the Icefield’s Parkway to Jasper, weather permitting. However, while the weather was currently good, it was forecast to turn snowy in a couple of days time. Having driven down the Icefield’s Parkway in a blizzard a couple of years ago (only a few hours before the road was closed for three days!), we decided it might be prudent to head for Jasper sooner rather than later to give ourselves a better chance of getting back safely.So we left Banff and headed up highway 1a towards Lake Louise. It would have been rude not to stop for a quick look at Morant’s Curve, just in case there was a train passing. There wasn’t, but there was still a nice view looking to the West.
Morant's Curve The view from Morant’s Curve looking South. You can almost see the sun shining through the clouds. Almost.
Yukon A photo of our Yukon with the mountains surrounding Lake Louise in the background.
Athabasca Glacier The status of the Icefield’s Parkway was shown as “Poor” as we left Lake Louise and started the 135 mile drive to Jasper (that’s one level above “Closed”!). There are no towns between Lake Louise and Jasper and at this time of year the few hotels on the road were all closed. Fortunately the road was relatively clear of snow (although you wouldn’t think it to look at this photo, which was taken near the Athbasca Glacier).
Athabasca Glacier You’d be able to see the Athabasca Glacier in the background of this photo if it weren’t for the snow, which had started to fall fairly steadily by this time. Still, it was only another 65 miles to Jasper!
Crow This was one of the crows that seem to live at the Athabasca Glacier. Although it is illegal to feed animals (and birds) in the national park, these crows must be being fed by someone because there appeared to be absolutely nothing at all for them to eat. They were looking pretty healthy though, despite the cold and apparent absence of food.
Nice View I’m not sure where this was, but it was the best view we’d had for a while when the snow eased up for a bit.
Endless Chain Although it wasn’t snowing where we were, it must have been snowing round about as there was no sign at all of the Endless Chain mountain range in the distance.
Mountain View This was one of the rare occasions when Judith actually got out of the car to have a look at the view, so I thought it was worth including.
Jasper After a couple more hours of driving, we finally made it to Jasper. Here’s a picture of Jasper across the town’s train yard, with Pyramid Mountain just visible through the clouds in the background.
Herding Elk The reason we had gone into the train yard in the first place was to watch a park ranger trying to herd this group of elk out of the train yard with only this large pickup truck (which gives you an idea of just how big the elk are).
Patricia Lake I’m going to call this “sunset” across Patricia Lake, but it’s actually the point at which the sun dips down behind the mountains, which is probably about an hour before actual sunset.Having managed to get quite a good “walk-in” rate at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge for a couple of nights, we decided to call it a day.
Coyote Sunday - While we were having breakfast at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, a couple of coyotes appeared out of the trees and walked across the lake right in front of the hotel. It’s quite a big lake and they were a fairly long way off, so this was the best photo I managed to get.
Squirrel After breakfast we went for a walk. There were a lot of these squirrels around and they didn’t seem very bothered by approaching people. This one allowed us to get within about ten feet of it as we passed. However, it would have been handy if it had chosen to sit in a slightly better illuminated spot as I was struggling to hold the camera still enough to get a sharp image.
Bridge Judith on a bridge.
Lake A miscellaneous view across Lake Beauvert. Although most of the lake was frozen over (as demonstrated by the coyotes walking across it earlier, this bit was showing no sign of freezing over at all.
Mountain We walked along the bank of the Athabasca River for a while, although there was no water in this bit of the river. Whistler’s Mountain is visible in the background, with the cablecar station just visible at the top of the mountain, slightly to the right of centre of the photo.
Trail We followed the river to the Old Fort Point car park, from where we picked up this hiking trail towards Old Fort Point itself. The trail was pretty easy going to start with, being fairly flat and clear of snow, but it soon got quite steep and snow covered, so progress was fairly slow.
View Eventually we climbed high enough to be clear of the trees, which afforded this nice view across the valley to Pyramid Mountain.
Judith #1 A view of Judith through the trees. You can see that the trail has got much snowier as we’ve climbed higher.
Judith #2 Same photo as the last one, but in full colour. I couldn’t decide which one I liked best, so I’ve included both.
Old Fort Point A short while later (although not as short as Judith would have liked), we arrived at Old Fort Point, where there was this wonderful view. That’s Pyramid Mountain in the distance. The snow covered lake on the right of the photo is Lake Beauvert, where our hotel is.
Medicine Lake It was still fairly early when we got back to the hotel from Old Fort Point, so we decided to take the short drive to Maligne Lake. I say short, but it’s still about 25 miles frm the hotel. On the way to Maligne Lake we passed Medicine Lake, which you can see in the photo.
Maligne Lake Eventually we made it to Maligne Lake, which, as you can see, was pretty snowy.On the 45 minute drive to the lake we had seen two cars, one snow plough and, remarkably, a bloke on a bicycle! On the 45 minute drive back to the hotel we saw no vehicles at all and one elk, which we nearly ran over because it was standing in the middle of the road at the bottom of a hill. I was only doing about 35-40mph when I saw the elk a couple of hundred yards away, but I’d only managed to slow the car down by about 15mph by the time we’d reached the spot the elk would have been standing in if it hadn’t conveniently stepped off the road a few seconds earlier.
Deer Just outside the hotel grounds we passed a small herd of small-ish deer grazing by the side of the road. This one appeared to be the boss of the group (there’s probably a proper name for that, but I can’t be bothered to look it up).
Deer A couple more of the deer grazing by the road.
Stars Monday - I was up quite early again. I had a look outside and could see starts, so I got wrapped up and headed out in the car to look for a spot with a good view of the sky. About five miles from the hotel is the Maligne Canyon view point, so I left the car in their car park and walked to the view point, which was a bit scary in the pitch dark (I left the car unlocked, just in case I needed to beat a hasty retreat back to it).Unfortunately, by the time I’d got my camera setup, it had started to get a bit misty and there were quite a few clouds blowing over.Still, this 30 second exposure came out okay. The glowing patch is Jasper, with Pyramid Mountain partially obscured by a tree on the right.
Star Trails Ordinarily I’d let one of these photos run for about twenty minutes, but a) there were a lot of clouds blowing past, so I wasn’t sure how well the picture was actually going to come out, and b) it was really cold, so this photo is only about ten minutes of exposures. Overall I didn’t do too badly with the clouds considering how it looked while I was standing there thinking I was freezing to death and wasting my time.
Icefields Parkway After breakfast we headed back down the Icefields Parkway. It was looking much snowier than it did when we drove up two days ago. However, given that big snow was forecast for the following day, we didn’t want to hang around in Jasper any longer than we already had.
Caribou We’ve seen these caribou warning signs a few times when we’ve been driving about in Canada, but I’ve yet to actually see a caribou. At least when you see a sign telling you to watch out for Big Horn sheep, you will almost invariably see some Big Horn sheep in the next one to two minutes (as they rarely seem to hang out on their own).
Endless Range Although there was more snow on the ground today, there was less in the air, so the visibility was much better and we could see the Endless Range that was hidden from us on Sunday.
Judith I finally managed to tempt/force Judith out of the car to give it a bit of scale.
Sky Walk On the left of this photo, you can see a walkway that is being constructed out over the valley. It looks rather impressive and will definitely be worth a visit when it’s complete.
Sky Walk A closer up view of the new walkway. It looked like it was nearly ready for visitors, but work had paused for a bit, what with it being winter.
Big Horn What did I tell you? Shortly after passing a sign telling us to watch out for Big Horn sheep on the road, we passed two walking down the middle of the road. This was one of them.
Big Horn A few hundred yards further along, there were about a dozen more milling about on and near the road.
Top of the Pass I think this is the highest point on the Icefields Parkway, and also the point at which you’re most likely to get snowed on/stuck. A couple of years ago we passed an SUV on its roof here whilst driving to Jasper and experienced a complete white-out in a blizzard whilst driving back. However, on this day the weather was quite clear and pleasant.
Avalanche Zone There are quite a few avalanche zones on the Icefields Parkway. Although you’re not permitted to stop in them, I assume it’s okay to stop just before one to take a photo of the sign?
Baker Creek Having safely completed our traversal of the Icefields Parkway, we decided to book into Baker Creek, where we stayed last year. They’re just so fabulously friendly and helpful at Baker Creek. The lady on the front desk explained to us the different types of accommodations they had available and then gave us the keys to a few of them to see which one we liked best.Having picked her favourite cabin (i.e. the most expensive one), Judith settled down in front of the fire to wait for dinner time to arrive.
Cabin Our cabin from a different angle.
Cabin And again.
Woods Having photographed the cabin from all of the angles I could manage, I turned my attention to outside. This was the view our porch/deck. It really was a cabin in the woods.
Railway Line A couple of hundred yards behind the resort is this railway line. I hung around for ten minutes or so, just in case a train came past. No such luck on this day.
Athabasca River A couple of hundred yards beyond the railway line is the Athabasca River.
Bear! Fortunately this is a wooden bear nailed to a tree outside our cabin and not the scary, furry, teeth and claws type that likely hang around here in the not winter.It was at about this point that a train went past. I could see tantalising glimpses of it through the trees, but nothing I could photograph. Doh!Shortly afterwards it got dark and the Bistro opened for dinner. Dinner was magnificent. It always is in the Bistro.
Lake Louise Wednesday - It was snowing when we got up and continued to snow through the day. We drove to Lake Louise village for breakfast and then drove up to Lake Louise itself because, well, it seemed rude not to when we were so close by.The lake was completely frozen over and covered with snow and there was no sign of the glaciers at the other end of the lake due to the reduced visibility.
Lake Louise Despite several signs warning of thin ice, this lady and her dog just marched straight across the lake. They didn’t fall through the ice while I was watching them, so maybe the signs were being a bit overly cautious? Still, I wasn’t going to risk it.
Tree #1 A snow covered tree. That’s the snow covered lake behind it, not the sky.
Tree #2 That tree again, but from a different angle. Now it’s slightly easier to tell that it’s laying on the snow on the lake.
Lake Louise Judith on the lakeside path, fairly close to the far (Western) end of the lake.
Trees More trees by the lake. That’s the lakeside path in the foreground, which was starting to look pretty snowy indeed by this point.Having completed the lakeside walk, we returned to our car and drove back to Baker Creek.
Moose Meadows Whist Judith was keen to settle down in front of the fire again, I was keen to drive to the (relatively) nearby Moose Meadows, where we had, for the first time ever, actually seen some moose when we passed this was on Sunday.At the time there were already a few people parked up and watching them. I didn’t want to contribute to the crowd, so I drove by and missed the photo opportunity. With a couple of hours before dark, I thought it would be worth popping back, just in case they were still in the vicinity (three days later?!). They obviously weren’t. But I took this photo, just to remind myself that I was there.
Train! Back at Baker Creek, there was still about an hour until dark, so I thought I’d pop down to the railway track, just in case there was a photo opportunity to be had. As it turned out, there was a photo opportunity occurring even before I got there. I hadn’t even managed to turn my camera on, never mind get it setup for taking photos of trains in the snow, when this train started passing.
Train Fortunately Canadian trains are really long and take a few minutes to pass, so I had ample opportunity to get my camera setup.
Train More train.
Tracks Once the train had passed, I settled down to wait for the next one, which I would be ready for when it arrived.
Another Train As it turned out, I had to wait for nearly an hour in the steadily falling snow for the next train to arrive, by which time it was starting to get dark.
Train This looks like it was going quite quickly, but I reckon it was doing no more than 25-30mph.
Train A black and white photo of a tanker carriage.
End of the Train After a couple of minutes, the train passed and the last carriage rapidly disappeared into the swirling snow.
Snowy Back at our cabin, I took this photo of the increasingly snowy woods before going for another magnificent dinner in the Bistro (which is the only place to eat within about ten miles of Baker Creek, so it’s a good job it’s good).
Snow Thursday - Judging by the state of our car, it looked like it had been snowing steadily all night. The windscreen wipers are up because it apparently stops them freezing to to windscreen during the night. I had observed the locals doing this, so assumed that it must be a good tactic. It took a fair while to clear all of that snow off the car.
Cabin Although we were scheduled to be leaving Baker Creek shortly, I headed out to take a few photos while Judith was packing. This was our cabin (on the right) from fifty yards into the woods.
Baker Creek This was taken from the road in front of the resort. I was hoping that a snow plough might have been past by now, but there was just a largely unbroken ten inches or so of snow on the road.
Creek The creek itself is somewhere under all that snow, so it was necessary to take care where you walked, just in case. Although it was mainly covered in ice, you could hear the water flowing underneath, so it definitely wouldn’t have been a good plan to fall in.
Judith Judith came out to see what was going on with the snow. Here she is standing on the road in front of the resort. As you can see, it was still snowing.By this time the Icefields Parkway had been closed due to the poor conditions. As it turned out, it would remain that way for another six days, so our plan to get back to the Banff end early turned out to be quite a good plan indeed!
Highway 1a Ordinarily I would have driven from Baker Creek back to Banff down highway 1a (which is the road that runs past the resort that Judith was standing on in the last photo). But as you can see from this photo, highway 1a still hadn’t been ploughed and was proving fairly challenging to drive on. I reckon the car was up to it, but I don’t have a massive amount of experience driving in these sort of conditions, so decided that the safest course of action would be to drive up to Castle Junction and then skip over onto highway 1. Highway 1 is the main trans-Canada highway and presumably where all of the snow ploughs were concentrating their efforts.
Highway 1 Highway 1 was also very snowy, but at least it had been ploughed and there was a sort of clear lane to drive on.
Canmore We stopped briefly in Banff for some breakfast before heading to Canmore, where we were planning to spend the night.The main street in Canmore was already looking pretty snowy.
Bow River Having checked into the Bow Valley motel, we decided to go for a bit of a walk down the Bow River. Although it wasn’t particularly cold out (about -5C), there was a stiff breeze that made walking about rather more arduous than one would have preferred.Here’s Judith on the bank of the Bow River.
Bridge Judith on the old railway bridge.
Bridge Me on the old railway bridge.
Pontiac Aztec Back at the motel, it looked like Walter White had checked in for the night (one for the Breaking Bad fans there). I wonder if the value of these awful, awful cars has appreciated at all since they were made famous by Breaking Bad?
Festive These people had clearly made an effort with their Christmas decorations.
Smith Dorien Trail Friday - We were flying home in the evening, but the plan was to take the scenic route back to Calgary and drive South from Canmore on the Smith Dorien Trail. However, overnight it had continued to snow and the temperature had dropped to -23C (and that was before you added in a generous amount of wind chill).In the ten minutes it took us to pick out way to the edge of Canmore, it became apparent that driving out into the wilderness was not going to be a sensible option on this day. So we turned around and headed for highway 1.
Highway 1 Although there wasn't a huge amount of snow on highway 1, it was blowing about a lot. We had a few brown-trousers moments as trucks, which seemed quite happy to drive at 110kph in these conditions, sped past.
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Calgary Tower After one of the most stressful drives of my life, we eventually made it safely to Calgary.With a whole afternoon to play with, we decided to first head up the Calgary Tower, as we hadn’t been up there for years.This was the view through the glass floor on the observation deck.
Glass Floor Me on the glass floor on the observation deck of the Calgary Tower (and holding on tightly to the rail, just in case).
Downtown The view to the North-West across downtown Calgary.
View The view to the South-West.
Core Whilst trying to navigate through the maze of tunnels and walkways that allow people to get around Calgary without venturing outside into the freezing cold, we managed to find our way into the impressive Core shopping centre (mall).
Roof The snow covered roof of the Core Mall.Having left the mall, we headed for the Joey Eau Claire steakhouse (formerly Joey Tomatoes), where we had a very nice dinner before heading for the airport.We had completely forgotten to factor in that we would be trying to leave downtown Calgary at 5pm on a Friday afternoon. The combination of the weather and the traffic made for a very stressful drive to the airport indeed. It took us over one-and-a-half hours to drive eight miles, including a stop on the hard shoulder of an eight lane highway to try to remove some of the blocks of ice that had accumulated on our windscreen wipers. That was not entertaining at -23C.However, we did eventually make it to the airport in one piece.
Plane This is the plane that would eventually take us home, once it had overcome a number of obstacles that resulted in it leaving an hour-and-a-half late:- Cargo door frozen open.- Spent half-an-hour being sprayed with de-icer so that nothing froze as we tried to take off.- Had to wait for another half-an-hour while they went to find someone to move a Westjet plane that had parked behind us.Still, they had turned on the in-flight entertainment while we waited, so the time positively flew by, unlike the plane itself (ho ho).
Home Saturday - Here we are approaching Heathrow. Apparently these 787 Dreamliners are pretty swift when they get the hammer down. Despite leaving an hour-and-a-half late, we we only half-an hour late getting in to Heathrow. A sterling effort indeed.Apart from the challenging weather conditions that made getting back to Calgary airport a complete nightmare, we had another brilliant week in the Canadian Rockies. We really might have to think about going during the summer next time though.Distance driven this week - 844 milesFuel economy from our 5.3 litre V8 GMC Yukon - 22.0mpg