Day 6 - Jasper to Lake Louise

I have a note here that says "leaving Jasper," which means that I wanted to describe something that happened in the process of leaving Jasper. Haven't the foggiest, though. I guess that's some piece of wonderful you'll just have to discover yourself by going there.

What we did after leaving Jasper was head to the Columbia Icefield. In fact, we had stopped at the Icefields centre on the way up to Jasper and done the museum (on the rainy day), so when we came to do the Icefields tour we could skip all the museum stuff.

The Columbia Icefield is a giant field of ice (in case you weren't clear) that is so large something like every resident of North America could have his or her own square acre of ice. Or something. It's big. You don't actually get your own square acre of ice, of course; nor do you actually get to see the Columbia Icefield. You actually get to see a "toe" of the Icefield, which is in itself quite a hunk of real estate, that is known as the Athabasca glacier.

Yes, I know the name Athabasca is being used quite frequently, and no, I don't know why. (Note: find out who or what Athabasca was.) There's an Athabasca River, and a Mount Athabasca. Plus everything related to those two.

You get on a tour bus at the Icefield Centre and it takes you across the road to where you get on the "Snocoach". These are buses specially designed to drive on to glaciers, or at least big cold areas with snow and mush. Evidently there are 19 Snocoachs in the world; 17 are here at the Athabasca Glacier, 1 is in another Canadian National Park (can't remember which one), and 1 is at the South Pole. These buses can do extraordinarily steep grades, which was kind of cool as we went "Whee!" over a moraine, which is an extremely large mound of dirt carved out of the Earth by the passage of the glacier.

The Snocoach takes you out onto the glacier. I had always thought glaciers were like icebergs; don't ask me why I thought that, but I had glaciers tucked away under the same file drawer as iceberg, avalanche, and snowplow -- mythical creations I need not trouble myself with on the West Coast. The driver takes you to a big area that has been specially flattened out and gives you 15 minutes to wander around, with the caveat that you don't go on the glacier.

People did, of course. Hey, it's just ice, right? As our driver said, people always think walking on the glacier is safe because they see other people doing it, when in fact it isn't safe, at all. The movement of the glacier is uneven; it is less wave coming into shore than incredible force pushing out and concentrating in the middle of the glacier. The force of the push creates crevasses, which are crevices (!) 30 or more meters deep and are usually hidden by a layer of snow. You don't see them until you've walked on the snow and then POW! you're down a crevasse. The driver said that hypothermia sets in at 20 minutes and it takes a rescue team 30 minutes to get to you at absolute minimum; you figure it out.

This danger was, I'm afraid, the only exciting thing about the glacier. It's a big piece of ice, one that has carved out this beautiful valley, but it's ice. And it doesn't even look much like ice, it looks like packed snowfall. After 15 minutes of standing around, I was happy to get back on the bus.

Our Snocoach driver was nuts. She had us doing "moose waves" to Snocoaches we passed, in which you hold your hands by the sides of your head, thumbs in ears, and waggle your fingers. (No waggling of tongue.) Her name's Jennifer Kennedy and she's got a million of 'em, and she'll make her passengers do every single one.

After the Icefield, we headed to Lake Louise. The Canadian Pacific hotel there is the Chateau Lake Louise, and although it has by far and away the smallest hotel room of the trip so far, it also has the best view: Lake Louise, right out our window.

I passed out shortly after arriving at the room. Everyone else went to explore the shops.

For dinner we went to the Tom Wilson dining room. (And, yes, pigged out.) Tom Wilson was the white guy who discovered the Lake of Little Fishes 150 years ago. He renamed it Emerald Lake, because of the amazing color of the lake...which is actually more aquamarine, a bright and stunning aquamarine at that, caused by the glacier crushing rocks into powder and the powder (known as rock flour) settling onto the bottom of the lake. Someone else came along and renamed the place Lake Louise, after Princess Louise, Victoria's daughter and wife of Canada's Governor General.

Our waiter, Chris, had a British accent and Lauren asked me where he was from. I listened to him a bit and said southern England, probably near London. As the meal wound up, I actually asked him, and it turned out he was from the Cotswolds, in southwest England. I asked Lauren if I got any points for that, and she said no. Turned out Chris is here as part of studying for a degree in hotel management in Manchester. He has to go back soon.

After dinner, my stomach finally told me it had had enough. I've been awake for hours -- it's now 3am. I have the feeling I can't chalk this up to altitude adjustment.