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.

Fort Nelson BC to Jasper AB, 2 days trip

 

Triple G Hideaway camp restaurant, Fort Nelson BC

The drive from Fort Nelson BC to near Grand Prairie AB wasn't too inspiring for picture taking, rather a bland drive compared to some we've had recently. Just a couple of pictures:

A couple of Sandhill Cranes at the roadside.

Another long and lonely road

The road itself is well-surfaced and easy to drive. There is a lot of oil&gas work all along this road, lots of working trucks in the area, so the road is likely better than it would otherwise be.

When we were getting ready to stop for the day, we pulled in to a pleasant little town park in Hythe AB. They require reservations now, and like so many little communities have hooked up with an organization to handle reservations. A site here would have started at $38, which we thought was too much. However by the time various fees and taxes were added it would have been over $50. I sent a complaint to the reservation company (since the town contact info was conspicuously absent at the park) and had a bit of dialog with them, mentioning that I only wanted an overnight parking spot, I didn't want to buy a site. Likely needless to say, the town didn't get our business either for the campsite or a fuel fillup at the gas station. 

Just short of Grande Prairie we saw a sign to a Provincial Park that caught our eye, Saskatoon Island Provincial Park. We were really ready to stop by then so pulled in. Saskatoon is a common name for things in Saskatchewan, including a fairly large town, but unusual to see it in Alberta. There's also a Saskatoon Mountain area, which I think includes the park we stayed at, as well as skiing in season.

Saskatoon Island park was a pleasant place to spend a night. Nicely separated wooded sites, good washrooms, the odd deer wandering around. Bugs are always around now, but they weren't bad here. Unfortunately we no more than got settled in to our lounge chairs outside when the predicted thunderstorms suddenly arrived. That was it for outside time for the night.

Luckily we have some screens that attach with magnets over the driver and passenger windows. So between showers we could keep the windows open for ventilation, without inviting passing bugs in.

Grande Prairie has a newly-opened Costco store, so we stopped in there for a browse on our way through in the morning. We did find a couple of small items to buy, and then they told us they owed us money. This was from the previous year's purchase rebates that had never found us. So they gave us the rebate in cash, and it more than covered our $25 purchases. A real first for a Costco trip! 

We had decided to take Hwy 40 south from Grande Prairie. It looked like it might wind its way through some foothills and mountain views, and keep us off the more heavily-traveled routes. 

Initially #40 was heavily under construction, then morphed into a kind of super-highway. More oil&gas activity, as witnessed by this flare:

Partway down to Hwy 16 Hwy 40 turned hillier, and we came across a coal-fired generating station, with what looked like its own coal mine operation:

Lots of excavation in surrounding hills

Part of this hillside was dug away, chasing the coal seams

The generating station 

 

Coal was dug from the hillside...

Coal conveyor ran under the highway on the left...

down to a processing point

We intended to continue on Hwy 40 southwards, crossing Hwy 16. The road was getting quite hilly and scenic:

Lookout from a roadside park

However we started thinking about how nice the Jasper area is, and wanted to take the top part of the Icefields Parkway that we had missed in 2018 due to fires in the area, so headed west for Jasper when we reached hwy 16: 

Even a curious moose

Inside Jasper Whistler's campground

Whistler's campground was remodelled a couple of years ago, a huge park with some 750 sites. We signed up for 2 nights, so more info on it next time.

Liard Hot Springs BC to Fort Nelson BC

 

We left Liard early as is usual with us, getting on the road by 6. In fact we had to undo the chain that was keeping the Overflow gate closed. 

We had an absolutely gorgeous drive today. This stretch of road that winds through many hills, along Muncho Lake and Stone Mountain is one of the finest drives we've been on. It's not as photo-picturesque as the Icefields Parkway from Lake Louise to Jasper AB, but we enjoy the drive more here. It is tough to capture this in pictures though, we're too busy looking around on this windy hilly drive.

Lots of lovely mountain views:

We also saw many signs of the violent spring floods from mountain runoff, whether from snow melt or heavy rains:

A lot of these channels came from mountain valleys visible in the background

The drive along Muncho Lake is especially beautiful, and also very worrying:

Sometimes the road gets very close to the water, especially right now

Some visible erosion

Some getting very visible!

No Camping, and No Fires. Really?

Partly because of our early starts, and likely partly because of little extra traffic in the early hours, we do get to see some wildlife usually:

A proud ewe and new lamb

A moose quickly disappeared into the bush

A young Caribou, after road salt?

And the first time we've ever seen a Lynx in the wild:

 

Cathie was the sharp-eyed spotter of the Lynx. He was just as hard to see in person as in the pictures.

Today we stopped quite early at the Triple G Hideaway campground at the north end of Fort Nelson. It's been a lovely afternoon, good showers, laundry, their own restaurant:

There's a burger on the left too, under all that stuff.

When we saw the plates coming, we didn't think we could possibly both finish our plateful. We did though, the waitress was quite proud of us for cleaning our plates.  :))

A pretty good rainstorm came through in late afternoon, hopefully clearing things up for tomorrow.