Yesterday was another long travel day with not much to see or tourist stops to make. Except about 50 miles west of Jasper in British Columbia is Mount Robson. We had been seeing mountain peak for awhile but when we rounded the corner and headed east there was Mount Robson looming over us. It was just breathtakingly beautiful! Sheer rock walls covered with snow standing almost 13,000 feet high and framed by closer mountains, it just begged to be photographed!
As we approached Jasper National Park in Alberta, the traffic picked up as this is a huge tourist destination for Canada. Jasper National Park abuts Banff National Park to the south and is within a days drive of five other national parks and several provincial parks. On top of that, the highway we were traveling on is a major east/west corridor thru the mountains. That said, Jasper was very busy and we haven't seen that many cars for weeks!
Just a short drive south of Jasper was one of many campgrounds in the park that we stopped in. It felt so good to get out of the car, build a fire, take a walk along the river and put our feet up for the night.
Today we got a late start to hike one of many trails in the Jasper area. The hike took us over a steep, rocky moraine then into the upper-subalpine forest and up into the alpine meadow. We walked about 4 miles with an elevation gain of about 1500 ft. that took us about four hours including a stop for lunch and a nap. The wild flowers were so pretty -- Indian Paintbrush, white and pink heather, daisies, lupine, goldenrod, yarrow, fireweed and many more I could not identify.
Always in view was the Cavell Mountain and Glacier. As glaciers go, this was not a huge one. As we walked we could hear cracks and thunder of the glacier breaking up and some pieces going into the Cavell Pond at the base of the mountain. We did not get to see any break off. We did see marmots, chipmunks and pikas. We were told there was a caribou up near the top of our trail but we were tired and ready to head down.
Before we went back to the RV, we stopped to see the Athbasca Falls. I'll let the pictures tell that story! They were awesome!
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