Chillin' on Icefields Parkway

While Banff and Jasper are adjacent national parks, Banff town and Jasper Town site are over 200 miles  apart. Joining these two hubs is the Icefields Parkway from Lake Louise to Jasper Townsite. Probably one of the most impressive mountain drives on our continent. Rugged ranges of peaks leap skyward at incredible degrees out of broad glacial valleys, ribboning meltwater streams and rivers. High hanging valleys bloom with glaciers peaking out, pondering the drops to valleys far below
Non stop vistas beseech to awestruck Traveller to stop and ponder the massifs layered before and around them, many jutting 5 or 6 thousand feet above.

Besides our drive to and from Jasper, with associates car tour stops to stand tape mouthed various overlooks, we did two hike in the heart of the Icefields, both foucused in finger glaciers emanating from the Columbia icefield, the larger ice form in North America at 230+ kilometers. Parker Ridge was a hike up and over the  that windy edgeo that once confined  the north side of the retreating Saskatchewan Glacier.

The other was a guided hike half way up the Columbia glacier.

Our guide,  Prokop, was a ice glacier enthusiast from Slovakia, now guiding here after a stint in Iceland.

He shared much of the natural science around glaciers; I was surprised how deep they are, how much of the side of the glacier is buried beneath debris, and fast they move ( many meters in the summer months), and also sadly how fast they are shrinking, both in depth and in retreat.
This is be accelerated by Ash from ever more frequent and intense forest fires. Indeed the glacier was dark gray near it toe, it's terminus, and there was Ash evidence further up as well.

Despite all of that he reveled in being on the ice and infectiously shared that all along the way, had us  straddle walking up an ice  melt stream, and also the "Viking Push-up", where one use their ice axe as a brace to lower ones lips to the stream to drink the ultra pure glacier water.