We just returned from a brief trip to Jasper, Alberta.
Day one: For me, the first clear sign of being away is – a sign. 153 km to the next gas. It’s like dropping off the edge of the world.
Where the highway winds up and around a mountain and totally freaks out people who aren’t used to mountain driving, especially if they’re in a rented RV, traffic came to a total stop. When we finally reached the site of the delay, we found three goats hanging around. One was sitting just outside the highway railing, enjoying the view. One was grazing along the side of the road.
The third was walking up the road, just having a little fun with those humans, I suspect.
Day two: We drove up to Maligne Lake (after discussing why it was malign, we discovered it’s pronounced ma-leen), and passed three bears, a mama and two cubs. We hiked along the lake just long enough to discover my lungs were not up for much, between the forest fire haze and the high altitude. We forked over for boat tickets, instead, and went on a two-hour trip. It was spectacular.
The lake is 22 km long, and we travelled about 2/3 of the way down, to Spirit Island. The end of the lake is a box canyon, enclosed in a single mountain range that makes two right-angle turns.
This blows my mind. How is this possible? But we looked at a 3-D model later, and indeed, the lake is lined with mountains, with one huge one at the end of the lake. and they are all, reportedly, geologically the same range. They also have glaciers, high and glorious. The guide showed us a hanging valley, carved by a glacier, above the Maligne valley, which was carved by a larger glacier, which is a hanging valley above the Athabasca valley, carved by the Athabasca glacier.
Then we went for high tea in a wonderful old building, and heard about Mary Schaffer, lady adventurer, who discovered the lake (well, for white people), from a description she received from a native man based on stories he’d heard (he’d never been there).
High tea: pots of really good tea, a grand selection of savory and sweet treats, including smoked duck and apple salad chopped fine on a wee bit of rye bread, smoked salmon and caviar, and the best lemon square I’ve ever had. It was exactly the flavour of lemon butter I used to make when I was a teenager, from an old family recipe. Perfection.
Day three: Early morning wolf howls, and then loon calls, and none of this lonely call thing. These loons were chatty. Later we went rowing on Patricia Lake (clunky, but we all love the motion of rowing). It was fabulous being on the water, sunny and clear with the occasional gust. We landed on a sandy spit (after threading in between rocks and fallen trees). We discovered sand with mud that we sunk into, which we didn’t mind. We did back off when we discovered something crawling up Lia’s calf that looked a lot like a leech. Then we discovered the rowboat was leaking.
It was a slow leak, but required a little bailing as we headed back.
Day four: A morning canoe trip to the end of the lake, accompanied by dragonflies, two loons and a family of ducks. Then a drive back to Calgary, through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.
Maureen
