Banff Part 2

 

Here’s more pictures of Banff. So many pictures… and I’m not doing a very good job of pairing them down for the posts this year. 

Anyway we left off hiking in the rain at Moraine Lake and I’m picking up hiking in the rain at Lake Louise, the second stop on that same tour. Both lakes were awesome but we all liked Moraine Lake the best. 

Lake Louise was very busy and the rain continued.

The famous Fairmont Chateau

Becky getting rained on

We hiked the lakeshore trail

Still having fun despite the rain 

Luke thinks the mountains look like a left had doing “this”. Sort of does I guess.

Amazing views of the lake at every turn.

Samus getting a shot towards the end of the trail where the water got murky.

There were some groups climbing the rock towards the end of the trail. Looked dangerous in the rain, but our guide said it’s popular in the rain because the overhangs here gives some protection. Still looked crazy to me.

Heading back, notice Dar and Crysolynn are sporting new rain jacks. Picked up over lunch between lakes. 

Walked through the chateau on our way out

After getting back that evening from our lakes tour we were welcomed with this note and a broken camper window. The neighbor kids were playing football and a bad bounce took out our window. When we saw them later that evening, we told them not to worry about it but they insisted so I said whatever makes you fell better. So we got some pizza money out of it. It’ll be a pain to fix I’m sure. I’ll have to cut some plexiglass to fit it like I did for Marcus window after he busted it in Vermont years ago.

Marcus duct taping the window to make it safe to drive and plug the hole from the elements. More rain is expected overnight. 

Glacier time, the next day we drove up the Icefield parkway halfway back towards Jasper to the Columbia Icefields to see the Athabasca Glacier.

We had tickets to ride up and get on the glacier. We got in with just enough time took a little longer than planned due to traffic on the two lane highway. 

That’s the impressive machine we ride up in. 

They had a square area roped off we could walk on.

Look at the natural glacier out past the area they had prepared for visitors 

I dug down a bit past the chipped ice to see the blue glacier. They had cut groves in the ice so it wasn’t too slippery so there was a layer of crushed (soda machine style) ice on the surface. 

Our crew on the ice. 

Grandpa and grandsons pushing the boundary

Me and my crew

Got one of all of us

It’s a big bus

Time to load up and get off the ice, you only spend like twenty minutes on the ice which is plenty. 

Another bus making the climb. Lots of bus transfers with this tour. Took a normal bus from the visitor center to the ice bus, took that up and then down the glacier, loaded a bus to the skywalk walk and then when done with the sky walk took a bus back to the visitor center. 

The sky walk. The far platform hanging over the cliff has a glass bottom. Scary!

Good views walking up to the sky walk

The Skywalk. I thought it would be worse than it was. Most of the time could only see rock under foot so looked to me just like walking on a tile floor. When you got over the river it got a little barfie but just a little.

Dar made it like a champ. I don’t think Lucas looked down at all but made the walk as well.

Another good shot of Marc and his Grandma. I need to make an effort to get some with the other two. 

Sheep on the rocks below the skywalk

A good stop on the way back towards Banff. Right at the bottom of a pretty good decent there was a turn off by the river, it wasn’t named or anything but we walked the wash out area back to a steep rock scrambling trail up past some rapids and to a big rushing waterfall. Was a pretty cool find.

Shot back to the White Knight, and can see the steady stream of cars coming down the mountain. It’s a busy road. 

The further we walked it back the cooler it got. 

Climbing up went past a meat grinder

We stopped at the waterfall, looked like we could go higher but was a little dicey already.

Getting down was harder then going up

Stopped at some turnoffs. Crys needed to get pictures of all the flowers.

A running joke of Marc’s was to telling us to get pictures of him for his senior pictures. Even though it’s a year early. He’d do a classic pose… “Wont be in a place more beautiful than this”… “Save you a bunch of money”… etc. I took this one and you know what, it would make a great Senior picture.

Eating supper back in Banff, deer just chilling outside the window. 

Dar took a good one of the Munsch’s after our hike.