The 200 square km Columbia Icefield is about 40 km north of our Rampart campsite, with many visible upland glaciers in the rocky valleys. We left site #46 with the hope of some clearing weather (more rain fell this morning). Seems like my folks are adjusting to my lazy A.M. tendencies, and we got lucky with clearing clouds again. The off-the-grid Icefield Center visitor center is busy with tourists from all over, and the starting point for the big buses which would take us up to the Ice Explorer outpost, overlooking the Athabaska Glacier. From there, we hopped on a big-tired ice cat bus which drove us about a mile out onto the middle of the bluish ice. Rocky peaks and slowly sliding glaciers surrounded us on the south and north. I happened to have a few drinking bottles with me, so I filled them with clean melt water for another day. 20 minutes of running around on the craggy ice went pretty quickly. Back down to the base, we walked around the rocky moraine for a bit before driving back down south. Stopped at Wilcox Creek to fill the four water cans to put into the camper tank later (it had been a few days since we showered). It was only about 20 km north of camp when we saw a few cars rubbernecking on the right side. Something moving in the brush about 200 meters out there....what is it? Could it be? It was a large male grizzly bear! A bit far off to photo, and it started moving out of sight. But then it popped out of the trees closer to the road and I ran on down to get a better view. It paid no attention to the cars and strolled right across the road, with one vehicle having to brake hard to stop in time. Up the hill and on to green meadows. I didn't expect to ever see such a big bear up close. We were still talking about it when we spotted a small black bear about 5 minutes later, munching on flowering plants and enjoying the cool sunny day. Dad and I both got some good photos of the bears. I'm quickly killing my 2GB flash card--which is good. We will trek north again tomorrow, 2 hours to the village of Jasper. If the weather is good again, we'll take the tram up the mountain.
Jay
Yesterday we got a late start to the Icefields, but that is OK because the days are long with sunlight. We often are enjoying a nice campfire at 2300 local time with the last rays of daylight. The evening fires are really nice. The campsite comes with all the wood you can burn. Each campsite has a fire ring and a large. We can have a enjoyable evening even with the temp in the 50's because there is no wind and we have that campfire. The smoke just winds itself up into the tall trees. Today we stopped at Wilcox campground to fill our water cans with about 20 gallons. This is necessary because there is no water at this camp. The camp host stopped by and spent about 20 minutes talking to us about his many different volunteer hosting locations. He is a nice guy from Calgary that has been hosing since 1992. He had answers to our many questions.
We came back from the Icefield with the selected rock for our backyard. We may have to put a little more air in the tires. We have completed about 2200 miles so far and are at the jumping off point to Alaska. After we take Jay to the bus in Lake Louise on Friday, we will take highway 16 east toward Hinton. At Hinton we join the Alcan Highway #1 for the rest of our journey.
This morning (July 15 wednesday) we see blue sky, therefore we are off to the town of Jasper. We are going to the Jasper Tramway for a tram ride of 973 (almost 3000 feet) vertical height. We will spend most of the day in Jasper as we need to stock up on some items. Maybe I can put up a link for the pictures that we have taken. Wifi access is not all that hard to find, but uploading a bunch of pictures is difficult at times.
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