A few last things about the Rockies trip, then I’ll shut up about it, I promise. It’s hard to believe we’ve been back a week. We’ve kind of started planning our next trip already.

The five best parts of the trip, for me:

• Lake O’Hara (pic) was almost certainly the most spectacular place I’ve ever been. Part of what made it so incredible was the relative isolation — only 40 other people are in the immediate area, so you don’t really see anyone else apart from the bus ride in and out. Lake Oesa, where we hiked to, was like a natural cathedral.
• Peyto Lake (pic | video) was a quick stop along the highway to Jasper, and was swarmed with tourists, but the scenery was immaculate: the mountains, the glacier, the impossible blue of the lake, the valley stretching north…it made for stunning pictures and a nice little video I posted to YouTube.
• Moraine Lake (pic) was almost as pretty as Lake Louise and about one-tenth as crowded. Our room at the lodge gave us a beautiful view of the lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks, and was the perfect home base from which to start our trip.
• Beauty Creek (pic) kind of snuck up on us, a short hike up a series of waterfalls and cascades, just off the highway but feeling miles away from anything. At that point in the week we didn’t really expect to be stunned and surprised anymore, but we were.
• The Athabasca Glacier (pic). There’s not much to say about this; we got to walk on a glacier. The glacier, though huge, was dwarfed by the surrounding mountains and was one little bit of a huge ice field that fed rivers running into three different oceans. I’ve never felt so small in my life.

In general, we had some really good fortune on our trip. The weather, for example, was better than we could’ve hoped for the first five days…sunny and in the teens, with no rain or snow whatsoever until the last two days when most of our outdoor activities were finished anyway. The food was terrific for the most part, though we can thank good research for that. Our rental car was comfortable, good on gas and had zero problems over the 600+ km we covered. It had a good stereo too, not that we needed it; apart for the Calgary-Canmore stretch of highway, we turned off the stereo/radio for the entire trip. There was more than enough natural beauty to keep us occupied. Finally, we lucked out — eventually — with the wildlife. Apparently it’d be pretty hard to spend a week in the Rockies without seeing deer, bighorn sheep or elk, but we got to see chipmunks and pikas high up around Lake O’Hara, and we got even got to see a coyote and a wolf just outside of Banff.

OK, I’ll do my best to curb any more Rockies talk.

[tags]rockies, lake o’hara, peyto lak, moraine lake, beauty creek, athabasca glacier[/tags]

That’s it, the last of the pictures are uploaded. Day 5 has quite a few pics, but days 6 and 7 are pretty light. Maybe I’ll put one or two of the videos into YouTube someday, but for now I’m happy this is done.

Day 5: pictures | description

Day 6: pictures | description

Day 7: pictures (no description; there were only 10 pictures taken as we drove out of Banff)

[tags]rockies, banff, banff springs, wolf, deer, elk, coyote, beauty creek, mistaya canyon, johnston canyon[/tags]

I’ve uploaded pictures from the fourth day of our trip, when we saw things around Jasper like Mount Robson, Maligne Canyon, Maligne Lake and the gondola to the top of The Whistlers. Lots of wildlife shots in this one: bighorn sheep, deer and a few distant elk. Click here for the pictures & description.

[tags]rockies, jasper, maligne lake, maligne canyon, bighorn sheep, deer, gondola, whistlers[/tags]

I’ve whittled the 405 pictures we took on the way from Lake Louise to Jasper down to 295…which is still a lot, but thankfully flickr lets you preview ’em before you open ’em. There’re about 70 of the Athabasca Glacier alone, so if you get tired of looking at ice just skip to the waterfalls. Pictures are here, description of the day is here.

[tags]rockies, banff, jasper, icefields parkway, bow lake, peyto lake, athabasca glacier, athabasca falls, sunwapta falls[/tags]

Here are the pictures from our second day in the Rockies, and my description of it. Again, the text should pretty much go along with the pictures. The first 156 (!) pictures are from the Lake O’Hara region where we hiked up to Lake Oesa and down again, then there are 10 of Lake Louise and 20 of Moraine Lake.

[tags]rockies, lake o’hara, lake oesa, yoho national park, lake louise, moraine lake[/tags]

I’ve upgraded to a Flickr Pro account so that I could upload all the pictures from the trip. Obviously I won’t bother posting some of them (some turned out blurry, and Nellie likes to take pictures of our hotel rooms that I’m sure aren’t interesting to anyone else). The sets are broken up into days: you can see pictures from day 1 here. My description of the day is here; the pictures pretty much follow along in sequence.

I had to scale them all down so that uploading wouldn’t take all night. If anyone wants an original version (most were in the 2800 x 1600 range) email me.

[tags]rockies, lake louise, kicking horse river, emerald lake, moraine lake[/tags]