Our next stop was an (early) included-in-the-tour buffet lunch at the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre. We arrived at 10:50am and filed into the upstairs restaurant.
The best thing I can say about it is that, as advertised, it was a lunch.
The vast majority of tourists we saw were Asian and while the food selection was not unusual, the flavoring of most dishes was designed to cater to their tastes.
Example: When you put potato salad on your plate you usually know how it will taste, with slight variations. When you then take a bite of that potato salad and find that it has apparently been made with soy sauce and five-spice powder it's unexpected. Not bad, but not the potato salad you were expecting and looking forward to. (Also maybe not what you want to load up your plate with when you know you're looking at a long bus ride for the next couple of days, if you know what I mean.)
I sampled everything but stuck with the fried fish fingers and was fine. Actually, the variety of little desserts were good too. Everything else was kind of strange. Looking at my notes I rated lunch a "Meh."
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| Driving in we passed the Columbia Icefield Skywalk which was included in our tour later in the day |
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| First view of the Athabasca Glacier. The glacier has lost half its volume over the last 125 years resulting in this "moonscape". |
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| Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre |
The Columbia Icefield is the largest ice field in the Rocky Mountains. It sits astride the Continental Divide along the border of British Columbia and Alberta and is about 125 square miles in size. The Athabasca Glacier is a part of the ice field that has flowed over and down the mountainside like an icy pseudopod.
Learning is fun!
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| After lunch it was time to go out on the glacier via the Columbia Icefield Ice Explorer Tour. |
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| See the group of parked vehicles on the glacier and the one driving out to join them? That's going to be us shortly. |
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| Our Ice Explorer |
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| To get down onto the glacier we have to go descend the lateral moraine (glacially-transported rocks and debris forming steep ridges along the sides of the glacier) via the steepest road I ever been on. I believe they said it was a 35° angle, although I don't remember exactly. |
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| The glacial, or katabatic, wind on the surface was brutal with a wind chill of 4°F. We could only stand it for about 10 minutes before going back to the vehicle. |
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| It looks cold, but it was much colder than it looks. I don't think I can properly convey how strong and bitingly cold that wind was. |
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| A closer look at the icefall. While the glacial ice advances several centimeters a day, here the ice flows faster over the steep landscape causing it to stretch and thin and form transverse crevasses. |
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| Closer looks at the surface |
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| Time to depart |
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| A moulin, where meltwater may drain |
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| Time to go back up the moraine |
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| And we're airborne |
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| Next up was the Skywalk, a glass-bottom bridge jutting over a canyon. |
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| First, the views |
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| Skywalk on the left |
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| Our friend Scott |
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| The glass portion |
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| Sorta looks like a glass-bottomed boat |
While I have no problems with glass-bottomed high things (see below), I probably wouldn't have paid to do this if it weren't already included in the price of the tour. It was fun to see other peoples' reactions, but I don't know, I guess I'd rather just see the natural beauty from the heights instead of these kind of artificial attractions. That's just me, though.
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| Bighorn sheep, seen as we were leaving |
Next up: The fantastic Lake Louse and Chateau Lake Louise.
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