June 13, 2025 - Driving to Alaska
Icefields Parkway -- Part Two
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| Continuing on the Icefields Parkway from Parker Ridge. |
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We come to Athabasca Glacier which is a big tourist attraction area. They have the Jasper National Park Icefield Information Centre and Glacier Gallery. You can go on the Columbia Icefield Adventure where you ride on an all-terrain Ice Explorer vehicle onto the glacier. You can also walk a glass skywalk (no thanks!).
We opted to just hike to as close to the Athabasca Glacier as we could get. We followed the red dotted trail pictured below.
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Looking back from the parking lot to the big Visitor's Center.
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| Here we go! That's Athabasca Glacier in the distance. |
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| The ground is covered with rocky debris; left by the receding glacier, no doubt. |
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| The visibility was outstanding in the cool, crisp air. |
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ROCK
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| Everywhere you looked was a Kodak moment. |
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| Getting closer. |
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| P26 |
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| P27 |
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| P28 |
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P29
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| Looking west at Sunwapta Lake. |
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A cairn saves us! The trail leads us to ... a parking lot we could have easily driven to. Oh well, the hike was very scenic.
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| From the parking lot we continue south towards the glacier. |
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Lynnette rests at the marker that shows where the glacier was in 1982. A good year!
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| Danger! Danger! |
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| This is as far as we can go. You have to be with a tour group to go further. |
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Glacier melt-water heads downhill towards Sunwapta Lake.
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| You can just see a tour bus at far right heading for the glacier. At some point, they get off the bus and board the ice explorer vehicle. |
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Looking back down at the parking lot and, way in the distance, the visitor's center.
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| Lynnette playing in the snow. Don't eat it! |
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| Another glacier remnant visible in the distance. What we don't know is that southwest of where we are, higher in the mountains, is a massive glacier cap that can only be seen from the air. |
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| We head back to the Visitor's Center, this time following the road. |
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A better look at one of the Columbia Icefield buses.
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| Now at the Visitor's Center where we had lunch in their cafeteria-style restaurant. |
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| Downstairs was a photo gallery with awesome aerial pictures of the Icefields Parkway area. |
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| Pictures like this can only be shot from the air. |
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Magnfiicent.
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| This is what the glass skywalk looks like. |
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Lynnette stands by a vintage, sightseeing snowcat.
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