Laura and Natalie's Awesome Adventures: Day 12

Today we completed our epic drive to Jasper. We went down to the restaurant for breakfast and enjoyed watching the hummingbirds while we ate our pancakes.

After breakfast we explored the resort a little bit, but not for too long as we wanted to get on the road.

We piled everything in to the back of the Jeep, knowing that we’d be able to unpack and organise the luggage better once we got to Jasper as we’re there for three nights.

We got on the road just before 11.00am, but for some reason the sat nav was being dodgy again and had our ETA as 3.45pm, which was weird at it was meant to be a bit less than 4 hours to Jasper. Ah well, not to worry, surely it’s just the sat nav being crap…

After another 20km on a different gravel road (this time it was less scary) we arrived at a level crossing and spent a few minutes waiting for a ridiculously long freight train to pass. Apparently, freight trains in Canada can regularly be up to 4000m long!

We drove through some heavy rain and did our best to shout away the clouds.

Before getting to Jasper National Park, we drove through Mount Robson Provincial Park and the view of Mount Robson as we drove down into the park was stunning. At almost 4,000m, the top of the mountain was hidden in the clouds.

A short while later we arrived at the border to Jasper National Park and we paid our entrance fee, which was about £40 each because it worked out cheaper to get an annual pass for all the national parks rather than pay for each day.

Something I hadn’t realised before we arrived, is that Jasper is a UNESCO world heritage site. It seems obvious now that it should be, but I guess I hadn’t considered it.

At this point, we realised why the sat nav had thought it would take us longer to get here – it’s because Alberta is +1 hour ahead! So our ETA was actually 2.45pm British Columbia time, but 3.45pm Alberta time. Ahhhhhh.

We went straight to the hotel and checked in. Jasper town is very nice and our hotel, Whistler’s Inn, is right in the middle. Our room looks east with a fantastic view of the mountains.

There was a bit of cloud in the sky, but the weather was good and there was plenty of blue sky, so we stuck to our plan and made our way to Mount Edith Cavell. The mountain is 3,363m high and is named after an English nurse executed by the Germans during World War I for having helped Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium to the Netherlands.

It’s main feature is Angel Glacier which hangs off the side of the mountain. It’s much smaller now than it used to be (damn global warming) and it used to join up to the glacier at the bottom.

Even though we can see the mountain from our hotel, it still took us an hour to get there. The drive was up a twisty, winding road, but the view when we rounded one bend near the end made it all worthwhile. The mountain filled the windshield of the Jeep, it was just so big, so tall, so imposing.

We parked in the car park (sidenote: which got a bit washed away a few years ago, see later in this blog) and looked up at the mountain. It was so impressive, rising 1,500m above us. We were at about 1800m already and it was cold so we layered up and put hats and fleeces on. I wore my crazy coloured new leggings too.

The trail took us up quite a steep ascent to a viewing area that gave an awesome view of the glacial melt pond, the glacier, Angel Glacer and the mountain itself. The trail used to go all the way down to the meltwater pond, but a couple of years ago a huge part of Ghost Glacier (about 125,000m3) fell 1,000m down into the pond and sent a torrent of water down the valley, washing away the car park, road and toilet block. So the trail has recently been closed because of the risk of falling ice, snow and rock. A few people still ventured down to the pond though to get a closer look at the glacier and to pick up a chunk of glacial ice…