Jasper and Banff

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JASPER and BANFF
Boxing Day morning was suppose to be blue sky but ended up being the opposite – foggy and snowing. We set off early as the drive to Jasper from Selena’s house is 450km (consider snow and ice on the roads it’s a lot longer). Our first destination was Valemont with a detour along the way through Helmcken Falls which was in the Wells Gray Provincial Park (check out the photo’s of the frozen lake on the blog). This trip took most of the day and we stopped off at a motel in Valemont, that to the kids amazement and mine, had a indoor heated waterslide (how cool is that?). So as you can imagine the night was spent riding down the waterslide (oops and I forgot our swimmers – darn).
Another early morning was planned as we set off for Jasper to commence the drive on The Icelands Parkway through the Canadian Rockies, which started at Jasper. Arrived at Jasper to have a coffee and pick up some maps and tips for the day from the Visitor Information Centre. The weather was holding and the day started with blue skies. First stop was the Athabasca Falls, which was frozen. Stopped several during the morning to take pictures of the great scenery, at one time we even saw a moose that was standing in the middle of the road. The next stop being the Icefield Centre and a look at the Columbia Glacier, which at the time was fogged in so we only got glimpses of the edges of the glacier. Continued on the drive until we arrived at a site called The Weeping Wall, which was a frozen fall that fell about 2oo+ metres from the mountain. See the photos, as this fall had two people climbing the ice – unbelievable what some people will do.
Next stop was Lake Louise which was completely different from my visit in the 90’s during summer. During summer the water is a magnificent torquise colour, but now was completely frozen and had ice rinks for hockey and skating. The Fairmont Hotel had built an ice castle on the lake and it was quite cold, -10 C so left the lake to have a look at the luxurious hotel situated at the lakes edge.
Left the lake to head for one of our last stops for the day in Banff and arrived at about 4pm and had dinner. We had planned to drive further that night but decided to get a room in Banff and check out some of the sites. After checking in decided to spend the night looking at the shops on Banff’s main road, made especially for us tourists.
The night in our hotel was quite hot as the thermostat for the heating was broken, Selena eventually opened a window to try and cool things down. Left town after breakfast and headed back to Heffley Lake which took about 6hrs. Spotted some wolves walking on the river as we left town, which was a pretty cool sight. On the drive back we went through a pass in the mountains called Roger’s Pass which involved going through tunnels(snow sheds), which are designed to protect cars from avalanches.