Saturday, August 6, 2011

Icefields Parkway 8/01/11

We drove along the Icefields Parkway, where there are numerous glaciers helping create the natural beauty here. Look at the photo of the Athabasca Glacier. You will see a diagonal line about half-way up the glacier. The several small dark rectangles are the large Snowcoaches shown in the next photo. Their small size in the glacier photo shows the large size of the glacier.

We were able to ride a large Snowcoach to the middle of the Athabasca Glacier, thereby giving us the opportunity of a lifetime to walk on the glacier. Only 23 of these specialized Snowcoaches were made and 22 of them are here (the other one is used at the North Pole for U.S. Arctic research). Prior to driving onto the glacier, the Snowcoaches drive through a pond to clean the tires so as to not bring stones and dirt onto the glacier and cause faster melting.

We also saw the turquoise-colored Peyto lake with the appearance of the head and body of a dog. Each of these gorgeous-weather days brings another magnificent sight of the Canadian Rockies.

No comments:

Post a Comment