Tuesday 22 August 2017

Jasper: Trail Ride, Hike, Bike until you see a bear, then take a boat.

Spirit Island, Maligne Lake, Jasper, BC.

Yesterday I took a 3 hour trail ride around the Pyramid Lakes just a few kilometres north of the Jasper townsite. It was delightful and I am not even sore today. That could be because I had a self-driving horse who walked perfectly behind the leader.  My participation in directing the horse was not required.

Today the sun was out again which was lucky for me!

I walked the short loop along the Valley of the Five Lakes which is about 7 km south of Jasper along the Highway 93 Icefields Parkway.  This was a low effort, high reward experience.

After lunch I hopped on my bike to travel along some of the lakes found just south of town.  This was all fine and dandy until while biking on a short section of road, after having been on a trail, I see a rather large brown or black bear emerge from a trail I was about to go on and amble across the road. It was about 50 m ahead of me.  This is all well and good when in the truck but NOT when I am on a bike. I had actually just pulled to the side of the road to consult the map.  That was fortuitous otherwise I would have been greeting Mr. Bear as he crossed the road. No thank you.  After that I rode with my whistle in my mouth cheerfully blowing it every 10 metres.  I felt like a nerd but was not interested in any more bear encounters - no matter how minor.

In the later afternoon I headed 50 kilometres out of town to Maligne Lake.  Yes, 50 kms down a paved yet somewhat slow road.  This is good to know when you pay a fortune for a photographers boat tour that departs at precisely 4:30 pm.  At 3:20 pm I noticed the website said, "Give yourself 1 - 1 1/2 hours to drive here".  Oops!  Well, I made it there by 4:05 pm so all was well.

Tomorrow it is time to go home so here are the shots from yesterday and today.


Mt. Edith Cavell, the now broken Angel Glacier.  This was the only shot that I salvaged from Facebook as I deleted all of the photos off my iPhone in a hurry the morning I went trail riding without checking to see if I had downloaded them all first. Dummy.















I see some sun!








Valley of the Five Lakes - Lake #1






Lake #2

Lake #3




Lake #5

Cycling along the Athabasca River. 

Remember that bear?  It crossed the road right were the blue car is. . .. 

So, now I'm biking like this.  Nice. 

















Lots of cute accommodation in Jasper.  


Trying to drive nicely as I rush to Maligne Lake. 

And, we are off. 

The docks on the edge of the lake that allow you to look at Spirit Island. Regular tours stop here for a very well-time 15 minutes.  Ours stayed for 1 hour. 































A nice little herd of Elk grazing in the campground. 


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