A check mark on the Bucket List

Back somewhere around 1974, a couple members of the ski club Betty and I belonged to visited Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies to do some heli-skiing (the helicopter drops you off and you ski all the way down. No lift lines, no ski patrol. Just your party and a lot of fresh powder).
When they returned to Cleveland they invited Betty and I (we weren't even an "item" yet, just had a lot of friends in common) to see their pictures. We were blown away by the scope and scale of the area. I don't honestly remember Betty saying anything, but I put the Canadian Rockies on my Bucket list right then.
As I pulled out of McBride this morning that picture party from 40+ years ago was on my mind. I was headed down highway 16, intent on climbing through mountain passes until I reached Jasper. There I would head south-southeast on Highway 93, the Icefields Parkway, toward Lake Louise and Banff.
It didn't take long for the excitement level to ramp up as large snow capped peaks began to appear on the skyline as soon as I started gaining elevation.

I can't swear to it but I believe I heard a female voice just to my right utter "Wow" when Resplendent Mountain first came into view near Mt. Robson Provincial Park


Shortly thereafter I entered Mt. Robson Park, entered Alberta, and entered the Mountain Time Zone. The guard at the park entrance asked me if I had a park pass (which I had sent away for when I found out they were free) but then never asked to see it, and I believe was prepared to give me one if I didn't!
I no sooner had entered the park and I had my first close-up view of a very large elk grazing alongside the highway. It had a light brown velvety cover on his antlers still, as did two more that I saw just down the road. I had not seen this in the wild before and thought it may be a Roosevelt Elk, but Google says it is simply pre-calcified antler. All three elk were very large however so they could have still been Roosevelt Elk. The second one had a dozen cars stopped on each side of the road so I too stopped. By the time I got the camera out it had just disappeared.
At almost exactly the one hundred mile mark (or aboot 165 Km) I came to Jasper. It sat at another poorly marked cross roads, so I had trouble finding it. I needed to refuel so I could make it to Banff if no other opportunities presented themselves, so I did a loopity-loop and pulled into a Petro-Canada, where I found something unusual sitting at the pump!
From there I did a strange U-Turn through a couple of parking lots and ended up heading south on Highway 93, the Icefields Parkway.
The panoramic feast just kept coming with a new course around every bend. I believe I wore out a set of brake pads today, stopping to take pictures (and nearly collected a little Toyota too!).
It started with the peaks east of the highway rising sharply skyward, some at elevations over 9,000 feet. The unique thing about these surfaces are that they used to be the valley floor before tectonic plate shifting thrust them up through some major upheaval. The strange thing from my uneducated eye was that, once in position, instead of eroding they seem to have been polished by the winds and seasonal run-offs.
As I travelled further south the peaks grew more impressive, showing up on both sides of the highway, in a more expected format they featured mini-peaks, culs, chutes, snowfields and a glacier or two.
I had a long ride ahead of me so I made many quick stops, finding places to explore should I decide to return at a future date. But for today, it was a feast for the eyes just to ride the Icefields Parkway and collect, among many others, these photos:
I stopped briefly in Lake Louise, toward the end of a long hot day which found me riding, for most of the afternoon, in short sleeves, something I rarely do. I am considering a return tomorrow (it's about 25 miles from Banff) to go to the lake and take a couple pictures. But after all the grandeur witnessed today, it seems somewhat reduced in scale of priorities. We'll see.
But Banff is a very upscale tourist community with lots and lots of people. I do not recall ever in my life paying as much for a hotel room as I have tonight. I intend to get as much for my money as possible (my Irish heritage). With checkout time at 11:00, I will be checking out around 10:58!













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