We drove from Mt Robson to Jasper on Friday afternoon, intending to stop at the Visitor Information Centre to find out about campgrounds, but there was so much traffic and so many people that we bought fuel and headed south on the Icefields Parkway. We had been given an information booklet when we paid our park entrance fee, and were able to work out where our preferred campgrounds were from the maps in the booklet. At the park entrance there was a board advising which grounds near Jasper were full … and by 3pm that was all but one! The Columbia Icefield ground about halfway between Jasper and Banff sounded appealing – close to the Athabascar Glacier and ‘tent only’, meaning that RVs weren’t allowed because of the narrow access road and small sites.

We got the last ‘walk-in’ tent site, so we had to park the car and carry our stuff for a couple of hundred metres, but it was a secluded area and not too noisy. Wonderful view from the carpark of the icefield and a couple of glaciers just across the road. We walked to the Athabascar Glacier the next morning and as with all the glaciers we have seen, we saw and learnt new things. This one has left very tall lateral moraines as it has receded, and as we walked where the glacier had previously been, I commented that it looked like a lunar landscape. At the far end of the glacial site, vegetation has started to grow – grasses, groundcovers, small shrubs. Trees will eventually grow there too, and change the former icy landscape further.

Driving down the Icefields Parkway, we were amazed at the huge volume of traffic heading north – loads of tour buses, cars, RVs but not many trucks as no through traffic is allowed, ie: if the trucks aren’t delivering within the Jasper/Banff National Park area they have to find an alternate route outside the parks. We drove through the village of Lake Louise and got to the lake at around 10.30am. The carparks were already filling, and there were lots of people around, but by the time we got back to the car 20 minutes later, all the carparks were full. We had 2 people fighting over our car space as we were leaving, traffic waiting to get into the carparks was backed up for a couple of kms and I predicted that there would be several nasty incidents of severe carpark rage by noon. As for Lake Louise itself – well, my mother taught me that if I couldn’t say something nice, I shouldn’t say anything.

We headed west to Yoho National Park to visit Emerald Lake and the Burgess Shale, which is one of the world’s most celebrated fossil fields. The actual field is only accessible via a guided tour and looks difficult to get to, so we just had a look at the lake, which is much prettier than Lake Louise and without the seething hordes of people or the huge ugly lakeside hotel, and read the information boards at the lake’s edge.

Further south to Banff, which we drove around and left fairly quickly (‘cos of all those cars and people – we obviously lack the herding instinct) and planned to spend the night in Calgary until we found out the prices of accommodation. It’s the final weekend of the Calgary Stampede, so it’s a very busy city at the moment. We kept on driving south to Fort MacLeod, a little town on Highway 2 which is historically significant because it was established by the North West Mounted Police (The Mounties) to tame the whiskey traders that came up from the western States.

We’ll be back in the US of A today, in the Lower 48 as they say in Alaska.

A small sample of the crowd and Lake Louise. Can’t take a picture of the lake too many people and canoes.

Athabascar Glacier

Natural Bridge in Yoho Park

For the geologically minded this is the hill that is the site of the world famous Burgess Shale fossils

Parked next to a little truck at McDonalds using their free wifi again (thanks McDonalds!)

Reflections in Glacier lakes

Heading east towards Jasper the next day, we stopped at the Ancient Forest to do the 60-90 minute loop walk. The tallest trees in the forest are Western Red Cedars, with the oldest estimated to be 1000+ years old. The forest was only discovered in 2006, and signage on Hwy 16 is …. minimal. Small sign stating that the forest is 1km ahead, and a very plain sign at the actual turn-off to the forest. However the infrastructure at the actual forest is excellent -500m long boardwalk what is wheelchair-accessible, with additional boardwalks and timber steps in sections of the Loop Walk.

There was a bear’s den in the hollow trunk of an old cedar tree. We didn’t see the bear, but his home looked very comfortable and a nice place to hibernate in winter.

Then on to Mount Robson, highest peak in the Canadian Rockies standing at just under 4000 metres, and the second highest peak in BC. Sheer magnificence. We camped at the smallest of the 3 campsites near the Visitor Centre, a bit pricey at CAD$ 25, but there was a shower block in the campground with lukewarm water, flushing toilets and a Dyson hand dryer, plus the usual vault (drop) toilets around the campsites.

I’ve just learnt that even though Mt Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, it’s actually the 69th highest peak in all of the Rocky Mountains, and the only Canadian peak in the highest 100. Most of the really high ones are in Colorado, with Mt Elbert the highest at 4400 metres.  We’re planning on driving down through Colorado, so we might get a chance to see some of those high peaks.

When we arrived at the Mt Robson Visitor Centre, the top of the peak was covered in cloud, but the next morning it was fine and we decided to do an 8.5km walk to and from Kinney Lake to get closer to the peak, and it was a nice walk beside the aquamarine Robson River to a beautiful blue kettle lake which had been created by build-up of glacial silt . Glad we started early though – by the time we got back to the car park there were a few large groups and a couple of families on bikes getting ready to set off. A tough ride for little kids.

The big tree at Ancient Forest. A 2000 year old Western Red Cedar

One of the old trees at Ancient Forest that had fallen down with a rotten trunk

Camped at Mount Robson. One of only 3 tent campers amongst 19 sites, the rest were in RVs or sleeping in their cars.

Reflections in the beautiful Kinney Lake that we walked 5km to

We had spent 7 nights camping so decided to stay in a motel in PG for 2 nights, to do the usual stuff that we do when we hit civilization- wash our clothes, do some shopping, eat out and see what there is to see. Earlier in the day, we visited a Totem Pole museum just west of Smithers. Interesting place, but what was even more interesting was meeting an Australian woman who knows family friends who live in Gatton, QLD. Yep, it’s a small world.

I think I’ll write a whole post about our good and bad experiences booking accommodation, but checking into the Carmel Motel in PG was a very trying time for us, the receptionist and probably the motel’s manager as well. We used Booking.com to reserved a room with a ‘kitchenette’, only to discover that the room we were allocated had no kitchen. Back to reception – ‘oh, yes sorry about that, we don’t have any of those rooms left’. We asked for our reservation to be cancelled, only to be informed that we couldn’t get  a refund on the first night’s accommodation as (by now) it was after 6pm. Huh? They can’t supply what we  were expecting, but they won’t give us a refund?! Seems like fairly appalling and flawed logic in these days of social media. Anyway, Greg phoned Booking.com and while he was on the phone to them, someone rang the motel and cancelled their booking (either that or the manager had second thoughts and realised that they would come out of this looking bad) … so we got our room. With kitchenette.

We’ve seen quite a few bears and moose now, plus assorted other critters, and I want to write down what we’ve learnt before I forget what we’ve been advised to do when we encounter something furry and potentially dangerous.

The rangers at Exit Glacier and Denali all spent a lot of time educating campers about the safest ways to interact with wildlife. Bears tend to want food, toiletries and other highly perfumed stuff and are usually not aggressive towards people, unless you accidentally get between a mother bear and her cub, or you’re near a bear’s kill site. In both cases the best thing to do is get away, fast.  Generally it’s a good idea to keep a distance of a few hundred metres between oneself and a bear – we’ve only seen them from the safety of our car or a bus, thankfully. We have bear spray that we take when we go walking, and keep at the door of our tent in case one decides to pay us a nocturnal visit. We keep all our food, toiletries and rubbish in the car overnight when we camp, or in the food lockers provided at some campgrounds. When walking, it’s best to make some noise so that any nearby bears know you’re around and don’t get a surprise if you get to close to them. A few people in Denali had ‘bear bells’ attached to their packs – very annoying and ineffective anyway. At best the bears ignore the bells, and in some places they have learnt to regard them as dinner bells.

So – making noise, standing up tall and looking big, talking in a loud voice are all good tactics to use if a bear is looking interested in you. If one decides to get too close, either lie down and ‘play dead’, or use bear spray if you’re carrying it and the bear is within 10 metres.

Ranger Kara at Wonder Lake told us a funny story about a woman who ‘played dead’ when a bear was about 100 metres away from her. The bear wandered up her, lay down beside her and fell asleep!

Moose seem to be more scary to me. They can charge without any provocation, on those skinny spindly legs with that huge body on top. The general advice is to keep a distance of at least 25 metres, and if one does charge or even just notices you, hide behind a tree or other large solid object, or run away in a zig-zag kind of pattern. Moose can’t change direction quickly.

No other big, scary, furry creatures to worry about …. so far. We just get excited when we see any wildlife – eagles, falcons, ptarmigans, elk, caribou, fox, gopher, bears, moose and even squirrels. A woman on the Inside Passage ferry trip told me that her first meal at her in-laws place in Arkansas was Squirrel & Dumplings, so now I look at squirrels a bit differently than I used to. I think it must have been a different type of squirrel though. The ones we have seen look tiny!

Dinner sitting in a tree, unfortunately out of reach.

Stewart is the northern-most ice-free port in Canada. It’s a pretty place nestled among high mountains, population 700, a couple of grocery stores, cafés and even one that started its life as a food truck and got built around as the business expanded. Hyder is just across the border in Alaska, population 100, lots of businesses closed. The Canadian customs officer told us that one of the hotels is run by an Australian woman, but it wasn’t open as it was Monday. The drawcard to Hyder is the bear-viewing area at Fish Creek which is a few kms northwest, and then the glacier another 30kms further on along a gravel road.

We saw a black bear beside the road to Fish Creek, but the salmon haven’t started running yet, so there’s not much activity yet. We were probably just a couple of weeks too early. There’s a chart at the Fish Creek ranger station showing the date that the first salmon made it there each year for the last 20 or so. Last year it was in late July, but that was because beavers had dammed the creek downstream and the fish were all there, waiting. As soon as the rangers broke down the dam, the fish started swimming upstream and the bears appeared. We asked the ranger about the condition of the road to Salmon Glacier and he warned us about a 100metre section, but told us that the rest of it was okay. It was. And so worth the drive.

Salmon Glacier is the biggest one we’ve seen, and the only one we’ve been able to see from above. Magnificent. Greg’s photos will tell more than I can put into words …

One of the bears we saw by the road near Fish Creek viewing area

Stopped near Bear Glacier on the way to Stewart

Fish Creek bear viewing area, no Salmon swimming upstream so no bears.

Looking down on Salmon Glacier, without doubt the best glacier we have seen yet.

Parked above Salmon Glacier. Its a little car park and there is hardly anyone there, which is surprising for such a fantastic view

Salmon Glacier

The windy narrow unsealed road of 32km to the viewpoint for the glacier

Kettle Lake below Salmon Glacier

The first night out of Whitehorse, we were still on Highway 1, the Alaska Highway, intending to camp at a provincial campground, but we stopped and chatted with an Englishman who was cycling from Anchorage to Yellowstone and he was planning on ‘stealth-camping’ so we figured we could too. Found a nice spot in forest far enough from the road that the trucks didn’t sound like they were going to drive through our tent, kept an ear out for bears and other critters, and even had warm showers thanks to our new bush shower and a few kettles full of boiling water. Greg went for a walk a bit further down the track and found a proper campsite with a little burnt-out log cabin, but by then we’d got all set up where we were.

A few people had told us that Hwy 37 was a beautiful scenic drive, and a really good alternate route to the Alaska Highway, but a couple of our maps showed long stretches of unpaved road  which made us hesitate a bit.  When we bought fuel at the junction, we asked the attendant and he told us that the first 100kms were pretty torn up, but the rest was fine. As we’d just driven a few hundred kms on pretty dodgy torn-up parts of the Alaska Highway, we opted for Highway 37.

We had a funny conversation with the gas station attendant – when Greg started talking to him, he commented that Greg had a ‘commonwealth accent’, ie Australian or New Zealand, because he can’t tell the difference, and in fact on this trip we’ve had more people think we’re New Zealanders than Australians. Hadn’t heard that one before, but I’ve learnt to ask people whereabouts in North America they’re from, rather than assume they’re American …. Canadians don’t like that.

Within half an hour of driving down Hwy 37, we had seen 2 bears and then an hour or so later when we stopped at a rest stop, a mother moose and her calf started walking towards us to check us out, but a passing motorbike scared them off. We took those animal sightings as a good sign that we had chosen the right road, and we got to see more wildlife as we drove along – a couple more bears, a fox, ptarmigan, a gopher. The road was pretty good, certainly no worse than Hwy 1, and with much less traffic. It was probably more winding, but very scenic driving along forest, rivers, lakes with a couple of lovely sections with snow-capped mountains on either side of us. There are a few villages along the way, and it’s possible to refuel every 200kms or so. The whole road is sealed and there is a good assortment of private and  provincial campgrounds/RV park. We stopped beside a beautiful lake one night, and in forest just off the side road to Steward/Hyde the next night. We had great views of several hanging glaciers across the valley. That one was … interesting, as there was recent evidence of bear activity nearby. It was very windy and we kept thinking we could hear bears, but if there were any they didn’t bother us.

Stealth camping by the Alaska Highway

Wild strawberries Judy picked at a roadside stop

Not big – wild strawberries

Judy picking wild strawberries

Another Free Camp. Camped by Kinaskin Lake near Mount Edziza in sunny weather, snow capped peaks in the background.

Camped beneath hanging glaciers near Stewart BC Canada