Stop # 6 July 21-23
Left campground around 8:30, stopped for lunch at the highest point on Yellowhead Highway, you really could see for a long distance. Arrived at Whistler's Campground in Jasper National Park around 3 pm, later in the evening, we drove down to Athabasca Falls, this falls is to be among the most powerful and breathtaking falls in the Rocky Mountains. One the way back to camp, it was drizzling a little and we saw a very beautiful double rainbow. When we got back to camp, saw our first elk in the campground, a small female. It stays light here til after 10pm. and gets daylight around 4 am.
Drizzling when we got up to caravan to Maligne Lake, 2nd largest glacier lake in the world, took a boat tour to Spirit Island, a well known spot, which is seen alot for the advertisement for Jasper Park, tour was about 1 1/2 hour long and saw 2 glaciers. Jasper had a snowstorm last week, high enough to cancel Maligne Lake boat tours, for 1 1/2 days. On the way back to camp, we stopped at Maligne Canyon, which shows the power of water to scrupt rock, the canyon is 165 feet deep. At the canyon, there are 6 bridges, we had seen 5 out of the six bridges, the other one was too far away. We drove to Moberly Flats and saw 6 big horn sheep and then decided to take the Jasper Tramway, saw the vistas of six mountain ranges, glacial fed lakes, meandering rivers and the scenic mountain town-site of Jasper. Tramway is Canada's highest and longest aerial tramway as well as the only aerial ropeway in the Canadian Rockies, also had another rainbow on top of mountain before descending.
Next morning we had left and headed south toward Columbia Icefields, halfway to Lake Louise. Stopped at Goats & Glaciers lookout, but didn't see any goats, we had traveled not far down the road and saw a bear, road congestion, stopped and watched for about half hour before a ranger came and shot flares into the air to get the bear moving, he was busy eating berries. Continued on down and stopped at Sumwapta Falls, walked down and looked at falls as it rushed through a limestone gorge. Made a few more stops before reaching the icefields. We had decided to walk to the fields, longer walk than it looked, up a steep grade before arriving at the ice. On our walk, there were different markers showing how far the icefield was years ago, since 2000 it really melted quite a bit. When we got back to Jasper, we had time for a wood fired pizza, before our drivers meeting.