Hi all,
We had another gorgeous sunny day today, but it looks like our run of these will come to an end tomorrow. Never mind, the bonus of coming here at this time of year is we are seeing a couple of different seasons at once.
This morning we first had breakfast at a local cafe, as we had said we wanted some waffles at some point. Rob had some with egg and bacon, and I had some with blueberry and maple syrup. Strangely, the same Harry Styles song played on repeat in the cafe for the entire 30 minutes we were there. It started to make me feel like I was in some sort of maple syrup induced insanity.........!
We then drove on to the Jasper Skytram. This opened in 1964 and is a two carriage bright red tram that summits Whistlers Peak ascending 6m per second just outside of the town. You ascend 1000m to a height of approximately 2200m. Today was perfect for the ascent - we could see the Rocky Mountains all around us, including Pyramid Mountain straight ahead, and even the peak of Mt Robson from two days ago in the distance. We could see the town, lots of glistening blue lakes and we enjoyed watching trains passing through slowly. The guide on the way up (who was from Perth) told our tram full of people that in Summer the population here grows to 5x its usual size, with up to 25000 people here due to the tourist rush. We much preferred it today - enough people to appreciate we were somewhere amazing, but few enough that we didn't have to book a tram time down like you do days in advance in the summer.
We took advantage of not being locked into a time to descend and hiked up to the second highest lookout on the mountain. Here we enjoyed gorgeous views down the Icefield Parkway and towards Mt Edith Cavell, all were nice and snowy. We decided not to go up to the peak as already with the section we walked on there was getting to be quite a lot of snow, and the two of us kept plunging our legs and arms into parts that weren't very tightly packed!! We didn't get hurt though and just laughed it off, with the wind drying us in no time.
We sat and ate our packed lunch while enjoying the view and then headed back down. From here, we drove to the Valley of the Five Lakes hike. This took us around 90 minutes and it was pretty hot by this point, so by the end we were quite tired. However, it was definitely worth it. These were the most beautiful lakes we have seen so far on our trip. I really thought we wouldn't get to see any spectacularly coloured lakes this time of year, but today we were in for a treat. After 20 minutes on the path, we spotted Fifth Lake first as we did the loop in reverse. Second lake was the least impressive of the five, but four out of five stunning lakes ain't bad!! I'll let the photos do the talking for these - the colours were unreal. The track here was very isolated, bear fear struck again but we soldiered on again with our bear spray on us. Pretty much every group we saw today had a can of bear spray too. I think we definitely did the right thing buying some "just in case".
We headed back into town next and enjoyed a much deserved two scoop ice cream each before going back to the room for a rest. We then went for a drive past the Fairmont Lodge (where we saw elk!), and then went back to Lake Annette that we visited yesterday and enjoyed a swim. It was cold, but we enjoyed submerging properly as it was quite refreshing! There were quite a lot of people swimming.
Tonight we are going out for dinner at a restaurant with a rooftop patio, and tomorrow we leave for Banff!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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