Athabasca Glacier, AB
DAY 15 - Onwards to Jasper!
Next we headed to check out the infamous Emerald Lake. It wasn't as smokey in Yoho as it was in Banff, so we had our hopes up that we would have a better view! Upon arriving, we noticed about 150 cars already parked along the road up to the parking lot. We decided to check it out anyways, and got lucky with a spot right up front. The lake was absolutely stunning, turquoise blue with the sun shining down on it and canoes scattered on the lake. We really did want to canoe on one of the lakes before we left, but for a minimum of $75/hour it was more worth it for us to put that towards another adventure! After soaking in the view for a little while, we decided to head out. Finally we would get to experience the Icefields Parkway!!
As soon as we took the exit, the huge mountains started to appear left and right. The only disappointment was even as we headed further away from Banff the smoke did not let up. It definitely took away from the experience a little bit, considering we really didn't have a great view.
We knew there were a million more turquoise lakes to see along the way, so we chose two of the most beautiful - Bow Lake and Peyto Lake. Both were just as breath taking as we expected. There was a bit of a trail to get to Peyto Lake, but we thought "how bad could it really be" and took off in our flip flops... Although it was a paved trail, there were ALOT of hills 😑 but we both agreed the view was well worth the struggle to get there.
By this time, it was already about 2pm and we still had around 154 KM to Jasper. Zack, who had told me numerous times that he just wanted a relaxing day to catch up on some sleep, was more than ready to be there already. I promised him no more stops, we will just go straight the campsite. This promise was going great, until we saw the sign for the Columbia Icefields. This was a place that I knew we had to see along the way, but didn't realize how close it was to us already... whoops 😇 Reluctantly, Zack pulled through the littered parking lot once again and we climbed back out of the truck. It was a valley of glaciers surrounding us, with a steep incline up to the Icefields. This time we actually put our running shoes on before tackling the climb. When we reached the peak, we starred out at a sheet of ice down the mountain and water trickling out. The cool wind was so strong and fierce, it whistled through my ears! As I complained, Zack reminded me that he would gladly sleep with this in his face every night... Which I already knew, because he sleeps with our fan full blown in his face ALL YEAR 😂
Back on the road, I promised Zack for real that that was our last stop!! Almost in Jasper now, we had to decide which campsite we wanted to go to. There are 3 main Reservable campsites, and many non-reservables along the way. This was the point that we realized, it was 5pm on a Friday... the chances of us getting a site was next to none. We stopped at Wapiti Campground to which they confirmed all of the Reservables were fully booked for the next 5 days, crap. The next best option was Snaring - a non-reservable, self-registration campground. We drove around each laneway, again fully taken. We pretty much had two options at this point: pay $15 to stay at the overflow and try to get a spot at Snaring in the morning with the 49585392 other people here, or backtrack a little bit and sleep in the truck for the night. So the cheap bastards that we are, went back to where we came from and after turning around about 5 times, decided on a good pull off to spend the night. There was another non-reservable spot called Mount Kerkeslin Campground a little further out from Jasper that we figured would be a little easier to get a site on. After an exhausting day of driving and stopping along the Icefields Parkway, we switched around the truck and settled into bed at 9:30pm. We knew we had an early battle ahead us trying to get a campsite in the morning!
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