Road Trips

Rockies - June 24th to July 2nd, 2005

Statistics -
Number of people - 2
Number of days - 8 days
Vehicle - Ford mini - Freestar
Number of miles/km - 1515 km.
Fuel cost + rental (Hertz) - $140 + $240
Cost of stay - $380
Cost of plane tickets - $1100
Cost of food - $400
Activities (gandola, entry fees, rafting) - $460
Total cost - $2820



Calgary (June 24, 2005) - We arrived in Calgary by plane at 6:30 pm, rented a mini-van and headed to the Ramada Inn hotel. We drove around in circles for a while because Ani took her time polishing up her navigation skills. Dinner was at a downtown chinese restaurant close to the Bow river which was swollen and muddy due to rains the past week. Calgary downtown - small, well-organized, beautiful buildings, some amazing sky scrapers, and everything seems to be Bow-something-or-other here.

We came back and crashed, and would drive further west to Banff the next day.

Calgary (25 June, 2005) - We reached the town of Banff after a one and a half hour drive from Calgary, capital of the western Canadian province of Alberta. Highway 1 - the majestic Trans Canada Highway cuts across the rockies all the way to Vancouver BC on the Pacific.

The road starts out from Calgary as a straight blue ribbon laid out on flat green lands and gentle medows and suddenly beyond the horizon the misty heights of the rocky mountains shimmer into view.

The road then meanders through the rough terrain and negotiates steep rock faces, curves around emerald lakes and dips through pine-clothed valleys until it reaches the small township of Banff.

We took the road away from Banff and towards our campsite at Two Jacks Lake.

The campsite was a room sized clearing in a forest of tall pines - one of several that lay right next to the Two Jacks lake which is a smaller lake adjacent to the Minnewanka Lake.

We used the campsite only for pitching the small 2-person tent at night (due to the high latitude there is still light here at 11 pm) and making a campfire in the iron fireplace provided on each campsite. The $7 fire-fee in addition to the $30 fee for the campsite was worth it because they provided fire-wood free. The daily fire ritual provided the necessary "camping experience" for us, and most importantly the ability to flaunt my fire-making-skill to Ani for the entire camping trip.

Although Banff was derided as being too touristy by friends, we loved it mainly because it was our first peek at the majestic rockies. The town itself was quaint with all the streets named after animals like Caribou St, Fox St. etc. Except for Main St. which was (yes) the main street that cut through town, on either side of which were arranged colorful boutique shops, gift shops, and a host of restaurants, surprizingly international in flavor. Ani even ate Sri-Lankan food at the food-court there, while I stuck to the Albertan favourite of beef where ever I could.

From Main St. we decided to hike the 1 mile to Basin and Spring. "The spring" was a surreal cave with a small pond filled with war sulphur water.

The hike to this place was on a mud track (frequented by horseback riders), with the road on one side and a misty marsh on the other side. The warm water trickling out of the volcanic belly of Sulphur mountain had created this marsh which actually survives the harsh winter here without freezing and is home to exotic species of plants and animals, including the rare warm water snail, which the Provincial park people take very seriously, and thanks to a written suggestion by Ani, may consider fining you for suspected mischief in the near future.

We got back to the town and visited the stepped gardens there. Ani and the spring flowers photogenically complied to my frenzied photo-taking.

The Gondola ride up to the top of the mountain was a bit further up by car and we decided to pay the $30 fee for an arial view of Banff. What we were treated to, far exceeded our expectations. From the top of the mountain (which was so cold that it warranted a hasty purchase of gloves) we could not only see the small town of Banff surrounded by silvery lakes, but all around were mountains stretching away to the far distance dappled with shafts of golden sunlight that found its way through the intermittent cloud cover. There were also the alpine goats and sheep that had walked up to the wooden steps and walking trail setup there to go even further to a vista point high up in the adjacent peak.

Banff (June 26, 2005) - I slept well in the tent; Ani did not. We set out on a hike around Minnewanka Lake and up one of the hills surrounding it on the Johnson Canyon hike. The flat blue of the lake with the background of the green and brown angular peaks of surrounding mountains provides for 360-degrees of picture perfect views. We hiked 8 miles that day and got tired. Some new muscles in my legs proclaimed their existence by inflicting pain on me with each step I took. This called for a trip to the upper hot springs where we could actually take a dip in hot water.

We headed towards Banff and on the way there we were greeted by some elk that had wandered onto the side of the road causing motorists to stop and take pictures. After lunch in Banff we paid a visit to the hot springs. Although we were let down by the presence of government mandated chlorine in the "sulphur springs" the 38-degree water was a panacea to our various aches and pains, and we headed back to camp. Next day would be a white water rafting trip at Golden.

Golden (June 27, 2005) - Golden is further west beyond Yoho Provincial Park. We were to do a half day rafting trip down Kicking Horse river (everything is Kicking Horse in Golden). We joined a group of rafters who had already completed a milder phase of rafting down-river and were having barbeque lunch on the small beach where they had tied their 8-person rafts. After a quick lunch we were given some safety instructions that followed the north-american format of injecting gruesome humor and trivia to lighten up the drab information. We then boarded the raft and floated down river along with the rest down rapids like twin-towers, goat point, etc. There were a couple of these that bounced us a bit but most of them just spun us a bit. After the 45-minute journey the crew tried their best to sell us a second run further down river which was heralded as being even more exciting than the trip so far, but we passed on the $45 additional fee, and decided to spend it on a cable car ride at the Golden Resort out further west, which promised a social visit to a grissly in captivitiy.

Sure enough after negotiating our way through the town of Golden and up through pine forests, we came to the resort and purchased our tickets for a ski-lift ride to the 22-acre enclosure which housed Boo, the 4 year old grissly orphan, who spent his time taking crowd-pleasing walks along the electric perimeter fence, and frequent dips in the small pond at the center of the enclosure.

After that further up in a cable car to the top of yet another mountain. But this was different. The top was almost bare and formidable looking with a ridge hike to another peak. There were scant trees and vegetation, scaly rock formations, sudden drops of several hundred feet on all sides, and snow and ice tongues on the faces of the mountain not exposed to the sun. We braved a trecherous hike to the next peak and were rewarded with surprizing vistas and a thorough lung workout in the scant air at this altitude.

By the time we got back to the resort at the foot of the hill in the cable car it was already getting late in the evening and we were to meet Ani's cousins in Lake Louise. When Ani called them up we were made an offer which we couldnt refuse - "Do you wan to stay in the Chateau Lake Louise for the night for a discounted price of $100."

So it was back east to Lake Louise for our tryst with luxury. This five star hotel forms the archetectural jewel in the crown that is Lake Louise. Set at one end of the picturesque lake, it is both part of history and now an integral part of the landscape that lends its man-made beauty to the excess of nature around it.

Anyway, we walked in our muddied clothes into the lobby and were shown into our rooms in the old wing of the hotel. After meeting and expressing our gratitude to the cousins over a ravenously devoured dinner we exposed our campground-worn backsides to the soft, silken caress of multi-layered beds in an airconditioned room. I became unconcious. Ani for some reason couldnt sleep, perhaps to savour the luxurious feeling of lying on the bed.. I dont know.

Lake Louise (june 28, 2005) - The next morning we could not help but be perky, what with the splendor of Lake Louise spread before our eyes with the swish of parting curtains. After a tour of the hotel and a walk around the lake, we bid farewell to the cousins, and set our bearings to Jasper.

The road to Jasper is called one of the most picturesque highways in the world - The Icefield Parkway. It winds its way through fantastic mountain country and gets as close to a glacier as a highway can get. The sights that our eyes feasted on included alpine lakes like Peyto lake, Sunwapta falls, hanging glaciers and fast flowing blue-green rivers that snaked their way along the road.

We reached Jasper at the end of the day, after checking into our campsite at Wabasso which was 20 minutes south-eaast of town.

If Banff was a delightful and touristy welcome to the Rockies, then Jasper was a thrilling bear hug. Not only were the mountains taller and the valleys deeper, but there was an air of the ominous in this beautiful town set on the frontiers to adventure. We had left the security of civilization somewhere behind, and what lay before us was an invitation to the bosom of nature, but on her terms. My melodramatic exaggeration is just to convey the differences between Banff and Jasper, because, save for the couple of bear attacks the past week, the area was generally safe.

We were greeted with a rainbow beyond the railyward in Jasper. We quickly had dinner and drove back to setup camp at Wabasso. We had become good at setting up tent by now. We could setup the tent in 5 minutes, and I could make a fire that could actually be used for cooking stuff on.

Jasper (June 29, 2005) - It was raining overnight off-and-on, which woke me up a couple of times with its incessant splatter on the tent roof, but I still slept better than I did in the city. Even HB had a good sleep here, so we decided to tackle the Madeline Lake hike. The helpful Provinvial park guard at the wabasso campground offered up a delightful concoction of colorful scenery, adventurous and strenuous climbs and an alpine glacier fed lake at the top, as an introduction to this hike, and we decided to test it out. Sure enough, it started out with a steady climb on a zig-zagging path through pine forests on a humid bed of muck and rocky outcrops, until we reached a large lake. Then the path followed the western bank of this lake to what looked like a landslide of huge boulders that stretched right up to the dizzy snowcapped peaks of a mountain. At this point Ani strung together a hasty mutiny, and wanted to head back. I negotiated for another 15 minutes of hiking further and she was reluctantly coaxed along with a chocolate bar and some other snacks. The desolate yet breathtaking scenery beyond the sub-alpine zone that greeted our eyes was well worth the effort. The lake was a saucer of blue within a gargantual amphetheatre of rocky mountains that humbled us with its size and grandeur. We lay on the rocks, digested the scenery along with some high-fibre cereal bars, and came away fully satisfied with the artistry of mother nature.

We lazed around Jasper town that afternoon, and Ani picked up an interesting book about wildflowers from the Friends of Jasper shop. We stopped at the information desk to verify the credentials of various wildlife we had spotted in our adventures so far. For the record these include female and male elk (one of which was a young male grazing majestically in the garden in the train depot within Jasper city limits), 3 types of squirrels or chipmunks, a noisy little (what was that?) little larger than a rat in Golden, a little brown snake in Five Lakes hike, a black bear loping along the road near the town of Field, a shaggy coyote along the highway near Jasper, several skittish white tailed deer, some sort of pheasant that lives in the barren alpine regions on mountains, and the most intriguing and inquisitive animal - the alpine marmot - a plucky (and furry) little creature the size of a cat that emits whistles when panic stricken and which we found on top of Whistler mountain the next day.

That evening we decided to just do the campsite thing, by building a fire, perhaps cooking and sleeping early. The fire was built, some eggs were boiled, a can of beans was heated, and bread was toasted, while Ani wrote some postcards and threw in some words of encouragement here and there. But she ended up eating some food which she had bought from a large fast food manufacturer. In protest I ate the food I had painstkingly cooked, not just for dinner, but also for breakfast the next day. I was rewarded with some mild intestinal tremors, but nothing serious.

Jasper (June 30, 2o05) - The next day we decided to hike the 5 lakes hike. These are 5 lakes like beads on a chain, connected to each other. What makes them unique is the different shades of blue green because of varying depths in each of the lakes. The greenish blue color itself is due to reflection of light off suspended sediments in the water. By this time, identifying the various wild flowers on the trial was a serious pastime for Ani and our hike was nothing more than stopping every couple of feet to earnestly stare at the minutest of plant life and fervently scanning the little book to correctly identify it. She successfully identified about 50 species of a possible 140 listed in that bible, and even a couple of other flowers (presumably "beyond the scope" of the pretentious little book) which were sumarilly denouced as "non-native species" by her.

Nonetheless, we completed Five Rivers hike and had ample time to head over to the Jasper gondola up Whistler mountain. The mountain top here was even more bleak than the Banff and Golden one - truely alpine - with very little plant life surviving at such great altitude and subject to blasts of cold winds.

Talking of cold winds, we were one our way to a high peak from where the gondola dropped us off, picking our way on the narrow path that skirted the mountain of scree when suddenly the sky to the west became thick with dark gray clouds.

These were low clouds that were approaching us fast, accompanied by cold winds that steadily intensified in velocity, temperature and sound, until I could easily stand at a 80-degree angle by leaning into the wind. Even the alpine marmot gave up its perch atop a nearby boulder and took refuge between two rocks. We were about to go further when the high winds tore my nice red pancho into tatters. We decided to head back as the whole world turned to dark gray and it seemed like we were walking on a decapitated mountain top tossed around in a sea of gray.

On the way down the gondola we could see snow flakes swirling in the wind. End of day-7.

Jasper (July 1, 2005) - We stopped at Athabasca falls on the way back to Lake Louise. It was the long weekend so we were not guaranteed a place in the campgrounds in Lake Louise, but we decided to take our chances.

The most unique spectacle on the most picturesque highway in the world - the Icefield Parkway - is the Columbia glacier. It is a tongue of ice that extends from the ice field and pushes its way down to the valley where, much to the gratitude of everyone is located the icefield center, strategically located to sell food, and glacier rides to thousands of tourists, including an inordinate number of Japanese tourists. Brewster owns all busses and glacier buggies in this region. Our travel companions on the glacier buggies were 50% japanese and on the way back from the glacier the comentary was in japanese. The ride itself was accross small mountains of lateral moraines pushed down by the glacier and beyond was the vast ghostly white expanse of the columbia glacier. The white corrugated surface of the glacier was apparently full of crevasses or fissures in the ice that could devour whole buildings, so bright blue cones were used to cordon of the area beyond a central clearing where we were free to dance around and bump into other brightly colored tourists periodically dumped here by the wealthy company.

We headed back after our allotted time on the glacier was over, and after eagerly devouring interesting facts and other trivia about glaciers in the museum below (which I have mostly forgotten by now), we headed off to Lake Louise.

We were lucky to get a no-fire campsite in Lake Louise itself, and had enough time to go to Takakaw falls. It was getting late in the evening on our way back, but we wanted to check out Moraine lake. Although we spent only 10 minutes here because it was already 10 pm, but still this lake made a sombre impression on us. Its apt description as the "beautiful and depressing?? lake" surrounded by mountains, holds true.

Yoho Provincial Park (July 2, 2005) - We made a hasty trip to Emerald lake, at the center of Yoho Provincial park. This is a very scenic lake with reflections of mountains in it dark tranquil waters, and the few colorful shacks that color its water front like any number of paintings that attempt to capture that solemn beauty of mountainous lakes.

Ani actually found a couple of orchids here which was the highlight of the short hike for her. My favourite wild flower - the orange paintbrush - was also in abundance here.

The colorful vista of emerald lake was a fitting farewell to our fun-filled road-trip to the Rockies. We drove back to Calgary airport and made up our minds to revisit this part of the world at the next opportunity we get.