I highly recommend the Great Glacier trail. It’s challenging at the end due to a steep final climb but very doable for almost anyone. The scenery is a good payoff, despite not actually ending at a glacier anymore.
@Sparky961 said:
For someone who’s never been in the mountains, I have to say that the drive from Mission, BC to Kelowna, BC has been pretty amazing. I expect it to get better still.
If you’ve never been to the mountains you have been missing!
Down on the water or up in the wilderness on some mountain.
Nowhere else to be.
Beautiful country there.
@Sparky961 said:
I’m going to be going on a whirlwind tour of the west coast very soon. I’m wondering if anyone has some last minute suggestions for places to visit along the way. This will not be a paddling trip but I’ll be returning before too long for some of that.My itinerary takes me through or near the following cities:
- Mission, BC
- Kamloops, BC
- Golden, BC
- Bellingham, WA
- Portland, OR
- Medford, OR
- Eureka, CA
Things that aren’t too far from the beaten path but often overlooked would be great. I’m not a fan of really touristy or urban stuff.
Thanks…
If you don’t mind being a little bad yo have to try VooDoo doughnut! Well known place.
Heads-up if you cross the Hood Canal Bridge. It closes for certain kinds of vessels passing underneath. Most closures are brief, but if a Navy sub is coming, expect a very long wait. Even though there is no height clearance problem, for some reason, “they” do not want anybody driving over the bridge when they are around.
@pikabike said:
Heads-up if you cross the Hood Canal Bridge. It closes for certain kinds of vessels passing underneath. Most closures are brief, but if a Navy sub is coming, expect a very long wait. Even though there is no height clearance problem, for some reason, “they” do not want anybody driving over the bridge when they are around.
You are aware that those subs are not just you’re average everyday sub–right?
@magooch said:
@pikabike said:
Heads-up if you cross the Hood Canal Bridge. It closes for certain kinds of vessels passing underneath. Most closures are brief, but if a Navy sub is coming, expect a very long wait. Even though there is no height clearance problem, for some reason, “they” do not want anybody driving over the bridge when they are around.You are aware that those subs are not just you’re average everyday sub–right?
Of course. Just about everyone who lived in that area knew.
So far, the Icefields Parkway has been a highlight of the trip. However, walking up the trail to the melting Athabasca Glacier - past signs with not so long ago dates where it used to end - was a very saddening experience. I’m not easily brought to tears but I’ll honestly admit that I struggled to keep my composure. I wouldn’t have guessed at my own reaction.
The first time I climbed Athabasca in August of 1975 it was completely white, covered with glacier ice and packed snow, all the way down into that bowl of what is now exposed scree and with little exposed rock on the front face. By the second ascent 13 years later we had at least an additional half mile of miserable shale scree pressure ridges to clamber up to get to snowline and the standard route had changed. You used to go to right of the jutting knob called the Silverthrone and up to the ridge. But melting had caused a huge bergschrund crevasse to open on that slope so we had to do a steep angle ice climb up the nose of the Silverthrone.
Wow, I remember when the tongue off the icefield was much farther up that dark scree line at either side of the valley. It looks like the glacier is less than half of its volume since 1975 – I recall the nose being only about 100 yards from the parking lot and you could step off the access road on the left directly onto the glacier. We did mountaineering rescue training on the glacier for a few days before climbing. The red half-track snow coaches that shuttled the tourons up onto it would stop so their clients could take photos of us hauling each other out of crevasses.
According to this article it seems to have lost 30% of its surface area just in the 20 years from 1994 to 2014.
https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/athabasca-glacier-melting-at-astonishing-rate/
Thanks for posting those photos – nice to be able to enjoy that spectacular drive vicariously.
Is that Mount Rundell in the sunset shot?
@willowleaf said:
Is that Mount Rundell in the sunset shot?
Sorry, no clue. I was just taking shots when I had the chance. It was definitely on the west side of the Icefields Parkway, to the southern end based on the sun.
Not Rundell then – Rundell is the sloping triangular peak that is above the Bow River valley outside of Banff townsite, There are so many beautiful peaks there. You do sort of get overwhelmed at the sheer quantity of photo ops. My first trips there I had regular film cameras – you had to be kind of stingy with how many shots you took when you only had 36 on a roll of film. All of what I shot on my mountain climbing trips were on slides which are still buried in Carousel boxes in my basement.
I’ve now checked off freakishly large trees and hiking at/above the tree line…
… And a Pacific sunset in California
… And waves crashing on the beach
… And elk
I wanted to put some more pictures here but the WiFi has really sucked the last few hotels.