My Cow-Gary Adventures: Revisiting the mountains

So I know this post makes it seem like I went to Jasper 2 back to back weekends, but I didn't.

After I went home for a bit in May, when I returned, a friend of mine had a conference in Calgary to attend. He was here for roughly about 10 or 12 days. In the meantime, over May 24 long-weekend, Darryl, my friend Tonya, and I decided to go to Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff.

Saturday:
We woke up early on Saturday and met up at about 9ish. We decided to start driving on Saturday morning, to save money on hotels.

We started on the Icefields Parkway towards Jasper. We accidently forgot to take the turnoff and crossed the BC boarder. It wasn't until after 5 mins of driving in BC, that we noticed we were off course. After the slight detour we found our way back and started taking pit stops here and there for photo opportunities.

Those were just a few driving photos. The weather that weekend was AMAZING. Initially when we first checked the weather it said it was supposed to rain a lot. BUT, as luck would have it...it didn't!

I tttttthink... that was Bow Lake?

...And this was Peyto Lake...?

After about 3 hours of driving we made it pass this "hair-pin-loop" shaped drive and to the top of this mountain where the view was gorgeous! You could see the road winding in between the mountains!

First stop...Columbia Icefields!
It was about $60 a person to ride this gigantic bus onto the icefields... or FREE if we parked about 10min away and walked there. We chose the cheaper option. Had we had more time, we could've done the actual bus tour.

As we continued our drive we saw our first wildlife.

A Bighorn Sheep :)

Then when we got bored of that, we started to visit a series of waterfalls.
This first one is named Tangle Falls.

This one is called Sunwapta Falls. The water from this one originates from the Athabasca Glacier as it melts. Sunwapta is a Stoney Indian word meaning "turbulent river."

Oooh here's the exciting part. As we continued to drive we spotted our second animal - A black bear! It was still relatively young. People were telling me it was bear season and that they are looking for food. Om nom nom!

THEN we went to see Athabasca Falls (the same one that was blocked off from my previous trip - well it wasn't this time!).

Those were images of the "upper falls" area. When you walked down stream, you walked down this stoney path which opened up to this beautiful lakes with a ton of rocks. Everyone was building inuksuks.

Continuing on the Icefields Parkway, we drove over a bridge crossing the Athabasca River and found a little turn off that gave you a great view.

Not too far from Jasper now! We headed to the Tramway. It was only about a 8-10min ride up. The scary part was we were riding the original tramway carts. Hard to believe they still work and wouldn't drop us. Oh believe me,I was clinging on for dear life.

Once we were at the top it was a gorgeous view. These pictures really don't do it justice at all. From the top we could see all the nearby lakes, rivers, and a TON of mountains. Some of the lakes were so emeraldy green...so gorgeous!

While at the top we also built snowmen.

It was like being on top of the world!

There was still a lot of snow up there. We tried to walk/climb to the top of that peak...but the shale rock + steepness made it so difficult. I got halfway, then gave up. Darryl took my camera and continued up the hill. If you focus, you can see my orange jacket.

Apparently there wasn't much at the top. It was just more snow and a further walking path. The bad part was that there wasn't enough time to explore. The last tramway was leaving in ~20min... and we had to walk/climb down quickly. I took no shame in sliding on my ass down. Hey! I wasn't willing to risk buckling my knee and rolling down a steep mountain with pointy rocks!

After that it was time to rest up and take a dip into the Hot Springs! Driving to Miette Hot Springs was quite scenic. We encountered not one, but TWO more Elk (or caribou... I actually don't know which is what...)!