The Icefields Parkway to Jasper/Hinton, Alberta

We had a long drive today to get to our KOA campground in Hinton, AB, so agreed it was best to limit our stops to the absolute highlights. Honestly, the scenery along the Parkway is such a highlight in and of itself, that we didn't feel like we missed much.

The Icefields Parkway (Highway 93) is 141 miles (227 km) of mountain road built almost parallel with the Continental Divide, which traverses through Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rockies (and through two Canadian Provinces: British Columbia and Alberta). They say a drive on the Parkway is like driving on the backbone of the North American continent, and that's exactly how it feels!

Fun fact: Did you know that Highway 93 boasts the Icefields Parkway but also shares its route with famous tourist destinations in the United States such as the Hoover Dam and Freemont Street in Las Vegas? It's kind of fun to think we could hop on 93 near Wickenburg, AZ and just keep driving north, all the way to Jasper!!

Peyto Lake

Our first stop was at Peyto Lake, which our folks had recommended as a "do not miss". Fed by the Peyto Glacier, this lake is about 1.7 miles long, and the viewpoint is about a half mile hike from the parking area. We visited on a still day, so got a nice reflection of the surrounding mountains on the lake. Such a classic example of the beautiful glacial lakes in this area!!

Our next stop was unplanned, but recommended by our Guide on the GuideAlong App (referenced in my previous blog post about Banff)...the Spiral Tunnels at Kicking Horse Pass.

The spiral tunnels are an engineering design feature, adopted from similar designs in Switzerland, to improve safety and reduce the grades of the train tracks. We stopped at the viewpoint just east of Field on Highway 93 to see the Lower Spiral Tunnel in Mt. Ogden.  Today, about 30 trains a day use this route, so it's typically not a very long wait to watch a train use the spiral tunnels! It really is quite a sight to see.

Scott always accuses me of being an infrastructure/local government nerd. I don't deny it! Although I'm not one that is a train fanatic, I can tell you the design of the Spiral Tunnels at Kicking Horse Pass was fascinating to both of us! I didn't take pictures, but found a great video on YouTube that shows what we witnessed.

In the photo above, you can see a single train winding through the forest, with visibility of the train in three different locations. What is not visible is the section of the train in the spiral. It spirals to the left up inside the mountain for .6 miles and emerges 50 feet higher. Hard to describe...but click that YouTube link for a better visual...and stop to see it yourself if you are traveling the Icefields Parkway!

The Columbia Icefield is the largest icefield in the Canadian Rockies and covers around 89 sq miles at depths up to 1,200 feet. The Athabasca Glacier is a large toe that extends down from the Columbia Icefield, and is accessible from Highway 93, and that is the glacier in our pictures above.

The glacier currently loses depth at a rate of about 16 ft per year and has receded almost a mile and lost over half of its volume in the past 125 years. All along the path that approaches the Athabasca Glacier are small signs that indicate where the glacier reached in certain years. Seeing this in person really puts into perspective just how big this glacier used to be and how much of it has disappeared. Once this ice is gone, there’s no getting it back. I posed with the 1992 sign (the year Scott and I got married), and it was quite remarkable how much the glacier had receded from that point.

While the higher altitude parts of the Columbia Icefield should persist for much longer, estimates are that the Athabasca Glacier will probably disappear between 2040-2100.

After hiking back down to the truck from our glacier excursion, we headed toward Hinton (about an hour past Jasper) to our KOA Kamping Kabin, which would be our base for the next three nights.