A day in Jasper area

 

View from SkyTram base

Tuesday wasn't the best weather, and as we both felt somewhat under the weather, decided to take the SkyTram ride. It's a gondola ride up the side of a mountain with local views, rising about 3,200 ft from the base about 4 km from our campsite:

The gondolas don't look very big

But apparently can hold up to 30 people, doing a sardine impersonation.

Parked for loading and unloading

Going up

The other car going down

The cables are looking smaller all the time

Pics along the way:

Cathie snapping away

From the top landing area. We didn't stray too far, only having about 20 minutes at the top:

The white tip of Mt Robson shows itself rarely up here we're told

That's the town of Jasper over there

Trails for the intrepid hikers (not us)

The top platform

A view of the campground where we're staying

A little closer, you can see the rings of sites

Cathie thought she'd try some shoveling - Not!

Wildlife at the top

We saw this nice elk at the campsite later:

We stayed at a large park similar to this one several years ago (more than 12 years ago, for sure), and wondered where the park was that we had stayed at, since this one wasn't it. It turns out that it was this one! Apparently they closed the old park about 4 years ago, and revamped the design of the park, reopening last year. The big change was they got rid of the large central washrooms and replaced them with smaller ones distributed around the various camping loops. Those central bathrooms were a real sore point in the old design, glad to see somebody saw the light.