Bike Trip: Day 1 of 3

After our days in Canmore and at the Stampede, Chris and Holly took Olivia back with them to Medicine Hat.  Dale and I with Jim and Caroline then took a 3-day bike trip northwest through the icefields to Sunwapta Falls (50 km south of Jasper), then back southwest to Cranbrook, BC and back east to Medicine Hat.  It was a great time of MANY breath-taking views, bear sightings, extreme weather changes from cold and wet to hot and dry, and conversations with some colourful fellow-bikers.

The best way to describe the trip is definitely through pictures!  Our first stop after leaving Canmore was at Lake Louise.  Though the lake and surrounding area was beautiful, it was crowded and commercialized.  After talking with a "local" and taking his recommendation, we had lunch in a reasonable lodge-like restaurant, and really enjoyed our time there.

Next, we turned north off the TransCanada on to highway 93 towards Jasper.  We noticed a distinct temperature change as we travelled throught the Icefields.  The glaciers were amazing, including the Columbia Icefields, Athabasca Glacier, Bow Glacier and others.  Absolutely enormous!  All of the streams, rivers and lakes were blue-green, clear and beautiful!

For the most part the weather was clear.  We rode through some light rain, but was out of it again before it was necessary to put on rainsuits.  Along this route, we spotted our first of a few bear sightings!  It was a little unnerving to be on a bike instead of a car and stop along the road for a photo opp - the guys kept the bikes running!  Caroline took a great shot of one of the bears we saw.

On a recommendation from one of Jim's motorcyle magazines, we stopped at Sunwapta Falls, 50 km before Jasper, and rented cabin-like rooms for the night.  We also ate dinner there.  Though each rooms had fireplaces with supposedly working floughs, the rooms still filled with smoke so the romantic fire idea didn't last long.

The Sunwapta Falls are part of the Sunwapta River, an Athabasca Glacier fed river so the river was running fairly high from the glacier melt.  The Falls are in two parts.  We only saw the first part.  The second was a little hike from the first, but we weren't exactly in our hiking gear.