Rob-n-Hild, oot and aboot eh? Sorry - 2022

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Edmonton - Jasper (425 km. 5 hours. Elevation maximum 1,449 metres)

Before taking off from Edmonton, we tracked down a Canada Post box to mail card. Wow - analogue communication. We also filled up Mary Jane at Costco petrol station.

During our drive we passed 1,000 metres above sea level for the first time this trip. How exciting - and recorded by Max, of course.

We started catching glimpses of the Canadian Rockies as we were nearing Hinton. And then at the Obed Summit the view was fantastic - as it should be from 1,152 meters above sea level.

The first fun plan of the day was to climb to the top of Athabasca Lookout outside Hinton along route 40. A sign merrily declared this the scenic route to Alaska! We had no intention on going that far... Hild had also high expectations to see caribou along the road, but no such luck. The 511 website has been warning about "the caribou migration", but we did not see no hide nor hair of them!

After some looking around we found the trail head at the luge parking lot of the Hinton Nordic Centre. Once again it turns out we needed our "piggies" (cleets for our boots) because of snow and ice on the trail.

The trail was only 900 metres in 45 minutes but with 135 metres ascent, which makes for this elevation fun profile for our walk.

After that slog, we looked this happy when we got up to the lookout and saw how beautiful it is.

Next we tried our luck at spotting beavers again - this time at the Beaver Boardwalk in Hinton. Their signage explains that this beavers have been living in this area for 20 years, and that they feel compelled to build dams when they hear running water! Still they also feel compelled to come out from their beaver lodges when Rob and Hild are nowhere nearby. So we admired the boardwalks, marvelled at the broken sections (like something from a Disney World Ride) and several lodges.

It was also fun to see that the multitudes of beaver dams now create at leasat 3 very different levels of water in the lake. They have been really busy little beavers!

Before driving on towards Jasper, we found a nice picnic table near the Beaver Boardwalk so we could have a picnic lunch and another cup of tea, of course.

It was great to see the various mountain formations as we got nearer to Jasper. There were the aptly-named folding mountains, and beautiful snow-capped mountains everywhere.

Suddenly the speed limit went down to 70 km/h and as ordered the wild sheep were all around about to cross the road. They are big horn sheep, but most of them had only small horns. We turned around and drove back down again only to find that the sheep where there still - only now they had actually made it across the road. Just a bit further up the road there where several deer grazing. Tourists were wildly snapping photos while the truckers and locals were surely rolling their eyes.

We stopped to marvel at the Jasper Lake Sand Dunes with the snow-capped mountains behind.

Next on the list of aptly-named sights was Emerald Pond, and - yes - the colour was striking and did not show as nicely in our photo.

At our final approach to Jasper we saw trains going both directions, and deer not giving a hoot about trains or cars.

We arrived in Jasper, checked into our hotel, and went for a downtown walk to get our bearings (and find the grocery store). Since we had quite a few hours of daylight left, we decided to drive up along Pyramid Lake road to scope out next morning's walk. We ended up at Pyramid Island, which has been (and is) a popular picnic spot for locals and tourists since the 1930s. Rob tried to spot more species in the icy cold water (unsuccessfully). We did locate the pyramid-shaped mountain that lends its name to this area. And there also great-looking roots of toppled-over trees.

May/June 2022

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