Foodivore: It's Albertan Summer - but not as we know it, Jim

Fresh from a balmy, relentlessly sunny, Alaskan summer and fall we progressed to Alberta. Recent (and current) home to forest fires. One of the hottest summers on record. What was happening to the Frozen North? Admittedly, it was still summer in Alberta (one of those quirks, where Alaska is already in Fall but near neighbours are not).

From the moment we awoke it was clear that Things Had Changed. The Frozen North had arrived.

Squirrel! Hope you haven't wasted the summer...

Enchanted, but undeterred, by what appeared to be lightening conditions we trekked off to the Valley of Five Lakes. Hmm things down here were picking up, maybe the weather was indeed "slumping southward". Pretty walk, but mostly it was the soft and peaceful flurries that we were enjoying.

Spiders intended to capture insects, apparently caught snowflakes instead

After another fine meal at the Jasper Brewing Company (see separate post re food & brewpubs in particular), we headed back to our cabin for a lazy afternoon watching the snow. Of course, wood doesn't chop itself (ok you can pay for chopped wood, but really who hasn't wanted to see how they would have stood up to the Klondike goldrush conditions, at least for a few minutes? The snow continued to drift peacefully down, throughout the afternoon and evening....

Who wants to be a lumberjack?

Rum'n'sno

The strong survive

The next day we were set to head off down the Icefields Parkway (hmm is the name a hint?) to Canmore. As we were leaving a mother and calf elk were hanging out right near the exit grazing through the snow covered grass, lovely.

"making of"

As we traveled south, conditions worsened. We'd given ourselves heaps of time, thinking we'd stop here and there to check out the sights (of which there are many) and maybe do a short hike or two along the way. Stopping is generally dependent on it being safe, careering off into icy pull in spots, or some with a foot or more of snow on them, doesn't qualify as safe. We made it to Athabasca Falls, which were beautiful (though it took us about 1/2hour to walk from the carpark due to treacherous ice, normally maybe 5mins).

Top of Athabasca Falls

From here on though, things got tougher.

The ever-present ravens contemplate less-green pastures

We threaded along cleared channels from earlier vehicles, most of which must have had greater clearance than Tommy (our Cruze) as persistent crunching/grinding noises emanated from beneath us from forcing through piles of icy snow. We learned that overtaking is strictly for the 4WD/truck crew, as only one lane attracts enough regular traffic to carve out a path of sorts.

Example of pretty good driving conditions (compared with what else we encountered)

Snowploughs were sighted, though far too late (and in the wrong direction) for us.

From the fact that we can report on this it's obvious that we made it, but it was tough and exhausting. Happily, Canmore also sported a brewpub (actually more than one, but one was ~5min walk away, and in that weather that was far enough for us).

So what became of our plans to hike around the Canmore/Banff/Icefields region? Well we did less, but still made sure to check out Lake Louise