Day 7 - Icefields Parkway to Lake Louise

The next morning the cloud was back. After breakfast we headed for Angel Glacier (below). We have some great photos of this glacier from previous visits. Nothing spectacular but not too bad.

This was the first time we'd seen the berg lake at the foot of the glacier frozen over (below). The floating bergs were still there but were locked in by the ice sheet.

We said our good-byes to Shawn who was headed back to Grande Prairie & went our separate ways. We took a couple of photos at a random lake along Hwy 93A (above) before stopping at Athabasca Falls (below).

The weather didn't get much better for the rest of the drive to Lake Louise. In fact it seemed to get colder. The cloud cleared breifly at Tangle Falls (below) so we stopped to eat our lunch & take a few photos of the falls. The wind was howling & there was no standing around out in the open despite the sun.

A couple of mountain sheep on the road were about the only other interesting thing for the drive.

We arrived at our hotel in Lake Louise (the Deer Lodge) only to find out that we couldn't check into our room because it wasn't ready yet. It was a sign of things to come. The room was tiny, the bed was collapsing on one side & the heating in the room was about 5 degrees too hot.

In disgust, we set off to Banff for dinner. The drive back was made difficult by no line markings on the road works & no moon thanks to the cloud cover. The oncoming traffic made it difficult to look for animals on the road.

Day 6 (Evening) - Wildlife Spotting

By the time we'd come down off the Whistlers the sun was getting pretty low in the sky. Being late in September, the days were already getting pretty short. I figured we had about an hour to drive around looking for animals before it was too dark.Our most successful hunting ground in the past has been Maligne Lake road. It's always been better in the mornings, but we thought we'd give it a shot. Not a thing. Not even an elk. There was lots of traffic, so no surprises there. We did see a few pikas (above) at Medicine Lake.Our second plan was to head along the highway toward Hinton. We got as far as the Miette Hot Springs road having seen nothing so we turned around & headed back to Jasper. About half way back we found a mob of Rocky Mountain Sheep (above). They're no smarter than your garden variety domestic sheep & have no road sense what so ever.

Right on sunset the scenery took on a different look including the rise of the full moon. Just as we'd about given in on seeing any more animals, we spotted a huge bull elk (below) at the side of the road. For the uninitiated, a good sized trophy elk has at least 6 points on each of his antlers (i.e. a 6 point buck). This guy has 7.

He wasn't alone. Just along the road a bit on the edge of town there were six bulls of varying sizes chasing a herdof about 20 females. A park ranger was trying to scare them away from the township to avoid conflict with people during the rut. He was using rubber bullets to scare off the more stubborn ones. One "member of the public" wearing a white shirt got out of his car & started yelling at the ranger to leave the elk alone. He was about as smart as the sheep. Bull elk are incedibly hostile during the rut & wandering around in a herd with a white shirt is asking for trouble. The ranger was not impressed & while they were arguing, one of the bulls made a charge at the man in the white shirt. The ranger waved off the elk just in time. Shawn & Rob were egging the ranger on to shoot the guy with the rubber bullets. He'd shut up & get back in his car then we thought.....

Day 6 (Afternoon) - Jasper Tramway

The afternoon activity was to take a ride on the Jasper Tramway. The tramway is a cable car that terminates at a lodge near the summit of The Whistlers. The high point on the ridge (above) is the summit, 100m higher than the lodge. You can hike up there without too much trouble, but it we were a bit short on time to make the last car. Needless to say, the views from the top are fantastic! The photo below is the Western aspect & is almost entirely in British Columbia. Roughly centre of the snow capped peaks above is the the summit of Mt Robson some 40kms away. With the zoom lense I was able to take the photo below. The skies are rarely clear enough to see the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies & to be able to take a crystal clear shot like this was down to pure luck with the weather. Mt Robson has a nasty habit of attracting clouds. Looking north east along the valley toward Hinton (& Edmonton) you can see Pyramid Mountain & at its foot, the two lakes we had visited that morning.To the right of the lakes (& just out of the above photo) is the Jasper town site (below) flanked by the Athabasca River & a number of sizable lakes.The South West aspect looks down the Icefields Parkway & we could even see the Valley of Five Lakes. We didn't want to go, but the tramway was only going to run for another 30 minutes.