A day in the Jasper area

 

View from SkyTram base

Tuesday wasn't the best weather, and as we both felt somewhat under the weather (me from a fall I had yesterday while hiking), we 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.Our trip had maybe 10 people going up, 15 down.

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 shovelling - Not!

Wildlife at the top

We saw this nice elk at the campsite later:

We stayed at a large park similar to this one (Whistler's) several years ago 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! 

The park was closed for the 2019 season to do an overhaul, and reopened in 2021 instead of the 2020 target. The large central washrooms were replaced with 17 smaller ones distributed around the various camping loops. Those central bathrooms and showers were a real sore point in the old design, glad to see somebody saw the light. Interior roads were revamped and widened too, so a major improvement.