Hi, everyone!
Every day on this trip, the weather forecast for the next day has been chilly and rainy. On Sunday night, Rosemary-san, our guide, didn’t know whether it would be worth going up Whistlers Mountain on the tram. When there are clouds around the top of the mountain, there’s nothing to see! But when we walked to breakfast at Jasper Park Lodge, we could see the upper tram station on the mountain. Everybody in the tour group decided it was worth taking the tram and hoping the clouds would burn off even more. So we drove to the base station of the Jasper Skytram and bought tickets. Jasper the bear and I made friends while I was waiting for our turn to go up in the tram car!
There was some mist around when we went up in the tram car, but it cleared once we were at the top. There’s a trail up the mountain beyond the tram car station, and Grandma gave me a ride partway up!
A snow cloud moved across the mountain and made a rainbow! We had a clear view of the town of Jasper and of the Jasper Park Lodge. I started to get cold, so Grandma took me into the cafe at the top of the tram station to have hot chocolate before we started down. It was yummy! On the way down, we could see all the dying pine trees. Rosemary-san says that in a year or two, most of the pine trees will be gone because of the pine bark beetle. It’s hard to imagine what these slopes will look like when that happens!
The afternoon stayed sunny, even though the weather forecast said rain was possible! After lunch in Jasper, we went to the Maligne Canyon to hike. Right at the intersection where we turned onto the canyon road, there was a bighorn sheep standing on a cliff! Maligne Canyon drains the water from Maligne Lake, but also from Medicine Lake. Some of the water from Medicine Lake drains into underground tunnels that rejoin the surface flow in Maligne Canyon. At first the canyon isn’t very deep, but the water cuts down through the rock in eddies and narrow channels. Rosemary-san explained that exposes fossils, and she showed us some!
There are bridges over the canyon gorge, so we crisscrossed the canyon as we walked downstream. There were lots of waterfalls, both in the main course and down the side walls. Rosemary-san showed us where some of the underground streams entered the canyon, making the river bigger! It was a very pretty place to hike!
At the end of our canyon hike, Rosemary-san told me a story about Douglas pine cones. Because little mice wouldn’t stop eating all the seeds out of the pine cones, the pine cones snapped closed. You can see the back legs and tail of the little mice trapped in the cone! When we drove back to the lodge after our hike, we saw two bull elk, one on either side of the road! I was happy to stay in the car to watch them!
Tuesday morning it was time to pack up and leave the Jasper Park Lodge. I said goodbye to the very nice cabin where we all stayed and to the porch chair that was just my size!
Our first stop on Tuesday was Athabasca Falls. The weather forecast again called for rain, but a waterfall is misty no matter when you visit it! There were lots of visitors when we arrived, so we walked around to the far end of the falls for the best views. Rosemary-san also found a pine tree where she could explain how pine bark beetles do their damage.
Our next stop was overlooking the Athabasca River upstream from the falls. Rosemary-san found some mountain goat hair stuck on tree bark! She told me that the overcoat hair has some of the longest fibers of any animal fur, so it makes very good yarn. Can you see the piece of mountain goat yarn in my paw that Rosemary-san twisted for me? Then she found some aspen leaves that had mapping from an insect that burrows under the outer protective leaf coat. They make mazes! Then we drove to a campground near Wilcox Pass. Rosemary-san’s husband Eric was there with a hot lunch ready for us! It was yummy!
We needed a hot lunch because our next adventure was walking on the Athabasca Glacier! When we hiked at Wilcox Pass on Sunday, we could see Athabasca Glacier from the red chairs. Now we were at the glacier! I walked on the glacier on my last trip, so I was excited to show Grandma and Grandpa how to do it! First, we had to walk a long way over the rubble to actually get to the glacier, because the glacier is receding every year. Then Grandma and Grandpa had to put special spikes over their boots so they could walk on the ice! They didn’t have spikes in my size, so Grandma let me ride with her.
We had a special ice walking guide, Karla-san. She showed us big holes in the ice where water had melted through! There was a long pipe that used to be buried in the ice. As the glacier gets thinner, the sections of the pipe fall out. Karla-san showed us how much thinner the ice has become in the past few years! Rosemary-san and Karla-san helped me walk on the ice, the same way LaVache’s grandma and Grandma Sue helped me on my last visit!
Grandma and Grandpa and I hiked on the ice for several hours. The weather stayed dry and was sometimes even sunny! Some people take a special bus out on the ice instead of hiking. I was happy we chose to hike, because the buses have to go up and down a VERY steep road to get to their viewing spot!
As we were hiking off the glacier, we saw a rainbow! Then Rosemary-san found a trilobite fossil in the rubble!
After our glacier walk, we drove into Yoho National Park in British Columbia. Banff, Jasper and Yoho National Parks are right next to each other. I made a new friend at the Cathedral Mountain Lodge, then it was my bedtime in the loft of Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin!
The weather forecast for Wednesday was “iffy” again, but we went to see Lake Louise anyway. The lake is particularly famous because the Canadian railroads built a big hotel there to promote tourists coming by rail to visit! The weather was chillier and cloudier than the last time I was here, but we decided to hike up to Lake Agnes and have lunch at the tea shop there. That is a very famous hike and we had lots of company!
The path to Lake Agnes climbs a total of 1400 feet in altitude, so we took lots of rests! We stopped at Mirror Lake, which is part-way up. When we got to Lake Agnes, it started raining!
I was glad to get out of the rain inside the Lake Agnes tea house. Rosemary-san has friends on the staff and found us a place to sit down. By the time we finished our lunches, it had stopped raining! We hiked a little higher up the trail to get a pretty view of Mirror Lake and Lake Louise below.
The hike downhill was a little faster than the way up! When we got back to Lake Louise, Grandma took a photo of me with more sunshine. Right after she did, there was an avalanche on the mountain right behind Lake Louise! You can see the snow cloud and then the snow sliding downhill from where it was before!
After our big hike, I was happy to get back to our lodge. There is a fire pit on the Kicking Horse River just in front of Grandma and Grandpa’s cottage. I even found roasting sticks! S’mores, anybody?
Love,
Lion-san
We liked the lodge you stayed at with a bench just your size. Why isn’t a rainbow really a snowbow? Those pine bark beetles are really doing a lot of damage. The two elk you saw on the way back from the Maligne Canyon looked very angry especially the first one. It is good you all stayed in the car. It was neat that you got to walk on a glacier and saw an avalanche and while you were gone it got hot here although you were cool.
Lion-San,
You may have been your tour group’s good luck 🍀 charm when it came to iffy weather. Sounds like clouds went away and the sun came out wherever you went! Good job!