Coming home to a place she’d never been before*: Jasper and Banff National Parks

“Hey, petrol is cheap,” T. said when we pulled up at our first gas station in Canada. We were renting a car for our week in Alberta. Gently, I reminded her that although the price looked cheap for a gallon of gasoline, it’s sold in litres up here. Ouch!

You never know what you’re going to get with T. Sometimes she’s all “I’m a pensioner, where’s my discount?” Next thing, she’s ziplining or getting me to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. And so it was that, at the Columbia Icefield between Jasper and Banff, she talked me into a guided “ice walk” on the Athabasca Glacier. 

I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk on the glacier. I pictured teetering along on solid ice, and as anyone who’s seen me try to skate would know, I don’t do ice. We were provided with mini-spikes to put on our boots—not crampons, but a rubber attachment with a mini version of metal spikes, for when we walked on the glacier. Apparently people who run and hike all winter use these. I was hooked.

The glacier from its "toe"

It was really walking on snow rather than ice. And although icewalks.com offers all sorts of layers you may not have brought with you, from rain pants to extra gloves, I found that once we were walking I quickly warmed up. The temperature was only around freezing and the snow was falling steadily, though lightly. Our guide, Forrest, said it was “a special day on the ice.”

It certainly was. Sometimes I couldn’t see anything but to follow the people in front of me in the path. We got to walk all around the glacier, safely avoiding crevasses, some fifty meters deep! (Or did he say 500?)

The features of the glacier are awesome, but like most glaciers it is receding, and may not be around in fifty years. Signs leading up to the lip of the glacier show where the ice reached to in recent decades. Our guide asked if anyone in the group had been born since 1982,

or since 2000. Stop it, Forrest, I thought from the back of the line. Some of us were born in the parking lot.

The ice walk was amazing, one of the highlights of my travels. C$100 for three hours turned out to be money very well spent (you obviously cannot walk the glacier without a guide, for safety reasons). On a sunny day it would be a very different experience, as you could look up and see the icefall. There were times when all we could see was white! Winter had come early, Albertans assured us. We knew this the morning we arrived in Jasper, when snow flurries greeted our arrival. 

There was some time between picking up our rental car and checking into our motel in Hinton, about an hour north of Jasper. So we took a leisurely drive part way down the Icefields Parkway, one of the highest and most scenic drives in the world. Unlike the Going-to-the-Sun Road, however, the Icefields Parkway (Alberta Highway 93 between Jasper and Banff) doesn’t wind around cliffs, but is pretty straightforward driving. It’s an extraordinarily good road, maintained, as we learned, by constant construction (in one spot or another) during the short summer.

On our first leg of the train journey we’d had a group of fourteen in our coach. I think they were from China (it’s a good guess wherever you travel these days), but couldn’t be certain what language they were speaking. In any case, it was amusing to find them following us wherever we went. Not just out of the train when we stopped at Kamloops, and they couldn't wait to stand by the tracks and smoke cigarettes (why else get out for “fresh air”?!) We saw them at the place we found breakfast, we saw them at stops along the parkway.

We even saw them at supper, when, through the unseasonable cold and snow, we went to get a steak and some Antler Ale. This was back in Hinton, where we were staying at the Pines Motel. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the rooms were there: nice touches like a bathtub and underfloor heating! Sometimes a motel with a couch and microwave feels like one of life’s greatest pleasures—at least after hours of snowy walking on the glacier.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It wasn’t snowing the day we hiked Maligne Canyon. This is a lovely walk across as many bridges as you care to cross (handily numbered First to Sixth) and along a ridge above the Maligne River.

The next day, we drove south from Hinton again to Maligne Lake, and hiked the first part of the Skyline Trail.

If you hike the whole trail, it takes you above the treeline (hence the name) and two or three days. We contented ourselves with an out-and-back to Lorraine and Mona Lakes. 

If you don’t see wild mammals between Hinton and Jasper, you are unfortunate indeed. Every time we rounded a bend there were elk or bighorn sheep grazing, or sometimes licking right in the middle of the road. It is their habitat and people defer to them.

Bighorn sheep

Young moose

The day we hiked from Maligne Lake, we saw a different type of animal crossing sign: caribou. Based on this warning, we are pretty sure that is what we saw a bit further down the road.

The caribou appears on the back of the quarter.

Caribou is another name for reindeer (in Alaska, typically, they’re eager to sell you sausage made out of this). I hadn’t know before that unlike other deer, both male and female caribou grow antlers. So all this time, Santa Claus’s team may have been coed. Just like a dogsled team.

We had several days in Jasper National Park, but we also wanted to visit its adjacent neighbour, Banff. Banff was the third national park in the world, and seems to provide slightly less for its visitors than Jasper. Maybe I was spoiled by facilities at every stop and trailhead in the northern park. At Lake Louise, one of the most visited national park sites in Canada, we struggled even to find a public washroom. They sure don’t want you to use the one in the Chateau Lake Louise. 

Mirror Lake

The lake itself, though, is postcard perfect. And Lake Louise is just the first of a series you can hike to—provided you are happy to walk relentlessly uphill. But it was a beautiful sunny day and the trail was only slippery in a few places. Armed with our hiking sticks, we reached alpine Mirror Lake and then our goal, Lake Agnes Teahouse.

Lake Agnes was not a letdown, but the teahouse sure was. To be fair, it was very busy, but there was nowhere to order; the signs instruct people to sit down and wait for someone to take their order. No one ever came. I mean no one ever even came out and acknowledged our presence, never mind took an order. And if you’re not going to hire more staff, teahouse folks, at least shovel the snow off the hundred steps to your washroom at the top of a steep hill. It was the only really slippery place on the whole trail. Don’t staff have to use it?

If you pack your own snacks, though, you’ll enjoy just sitting and having a look at Lake Agnes.

We were glad to get back down to Lake Louise. I think people canoeing on this picture-perfect lake may be the iconic Canadian image.

Back in the day, there were two rail companies that crossed Canada to the west. One, CN, we have already established built tracks on the northern route, via Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Edmonton, Alberta. The original (whose equipment, funnily enough, VIA Rail uses today on the CN route) was Canadian Pacific. That railroad used the southern route via Regina and Calgary. In the old days travelers piled into Banff and its Springs Hotel from Royal Canadian Pacific trains. 

Nowadays, the only train that uses the Banff and Lake Louise stations is the Rocky Mountaineer, a pricy tourist train. Lake Louise station does house a restaurant though, and we had a look round. It’s one of Canada’s only remaining log railway stations. Even the bench out front seemed classically comfortable.

Dining car, old CP railroad

Between Lake Louise and Banff there are two highways. The Bow Valley Parkway is slower, but much more scenic. We took it a couple of times but did not see any wildlife. For that, you should drive north of Jasper, where we saw herds of something literally every time.

We stayed a couple of nights in Banff, in another HI hostel. This one was nice too, with a $7 lasagna special in the bar (and $3 shots). We were in a dorm for six, though, and this turned out to be a bit much. I am fairly certain we had a variety of religions represented in the room, which was not a problem, except whatever two young women's religion was they got up at the crack of arse to light candles. T. said they were putting plastic bags on top! I didn't know any of this; I just smelled something perfumey and wondered why anyone had plugged in an air freshener at 4:00 in the morning.

Not a bad view, though

Something else I've noticed the few times I've stayed in hostels is the packing habits of certain hosteling young women: Everything in their suitcases is wrapped in plastic. Not regular plastic bags, like we're destroying the oceans with, but the kind hard candy is wrapped in. Packing and unpacking, for these gals, involves hours of crumpling and uncrumpling--slowly, torturously, so as not to disturb others, I guess. Boy were we glad to get back to the Pines Motel, where the proprietor welcomed us back like old friends!

Now I know I've gotten a bit obsessive about this, but I was so happy to be wearing my fleece as a mid layer while we were hiking. It was cold and there was snow on the ground, but the sun was out and we worked up a sweat hiking uphill. Unlike cotton, the fleece kept me warm when we stopped, and dried out instead of giving me a chill. Wish I'd gotten this right on Kili summit night!

Speaking of layers, there was a lovely layer of snow on the ground when we woke up on our last day in Hinton. The snow was swirling outside, as it had been on our ice walk, but driving didn't seem dangerous. We found that we really liked Hinton and were most disappointed to find that the Canadian Steakout, our supper place of choice, isn't a chain and we couldn't find it anywhere else.

The Steakout was so good we went there twice (they don't serve only steak). I got a kick out of their menu, which flagged tiger shrimp pasta as "vegetarian." I guess in Alberta, if it isn't beef, it's veggie! The place was so popular we had to sit at the bar in front of three TVs. One was showing Canadian football, one a preseason Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game, and the third, for some reason, a religious channel. I found it a little distracting to lift my eyes from the bar and see teachings about leprosy or marriage guidance popping up next to Johnny Manziel. But the best thing about the Steakout was the wall decorations.

This is a jersey signed by the entire Canadian women's hockey
team that won gold at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Between that and Randy Bachman's guitar (of bands The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive), it was like the whole country was telling me "Welcome home."

Who knew we'd end up enjoying Hinton so much? We just thought it was a more affordable place to stay than Jasper. But the Canadian was coming through town again, so we had to return our car and catch the train. We got going early that morning because we'd seen forecast of snow accumulation.

It wasn't cold enough to make scraping the windshield difficult--good thing T. still had her key card from the ship to use. On the way to Jasper the road was rather dicey. We were following a minivan when we saw it slowly slide off the road in front of us. Fortunately, no one was driving fast and the van came to no harm in a snow bank, but the women inside were shaken up. I think they were Canadian, but they had no boots on, no winter coats, nothing. We and another driver stayed with them until we were sure their heat was working and a tow truck was on its way.

Our last glimpse of Hinton was from the train which, delayed by an hour or so, rolled back northeast to where we had just come from. By now the mountains just looked beautifully frosted and we were glad not to be on the road. I even spotted an elk from the window--there are so many in Jasper National Park I was spoiled for choice as to pictures.

Here's one I saw earlier.

*John Denver, "Rocky Mountain High"