Let it snow

There was a dusting of snow on the hills, and it was suddenly bitterly cold at night – so much so, we finally found out how to work Doris’ furnace (boiler, to you and me) when it came on automatically one night, meaning it had gone down to freezing inside.
Still, there was no snow in Lake Louise and the highways were clear, so we decided to head up to the Columbia Icefield, some 100kms north up the Icefields Parkway, but still south of Jasper. Bearing in mind the weather forecast and the fact we were already close to going over Doris’ mileage allowance of 5,500 kilometres – told you Canada was big, eh – we decided not to go any further north.

Well, the Icefields Parkway lived up to its name. Suddenly, we were in a winter wonderland and the kids decided Christmas had come early. I gamely drove on up and up, round hairpin bends with sheer drops as the snow began in earnest, to a chorus of every Christmas song the kids know, ending in a whole family belter of a Partridge in a Pear Tree. Now, this was September 16th and we finally believed what everyone had told us about the weather. With some relief I parked up at the Columbia Icefield for what we hoped would be one of the highlights of Canada, and a lifetime first for me and the kids (though not for smugly Joe, who did it in the Alps) – walking on a glacier.

The kids are now sick to death with glaciation homework. They can define terminal and lateral moraine, rock flour and more, and know all there is to know about watersheds, continental divides and glaciation. It was a bit of a pet subject of mine, geography, and walking about on a 7 kilometre glacier that is deeper than the Empire State Building is tall was nothing short of mindblowing. The icefield has 23 FOOT of snow a year, they don’t mess about with inches here, and even on August 11th this year they had 6 inches of snow. Yet, the glacier is receding too quick and the moraine lake silting up – good old global warming. Bit hard to put it into context as you stand in the driving snow in early autumn on ice reaching as far as the eye can see however. This icefield is a rather significant one, as all water coming north from it goes to the Arctic; rivers to the east water the prairies on their way to the Atlantic, while those heading west provide hydroelectric power all the way down to LA and run into the Pacific. Without getting too boring on geography, the kids have also been learning about how the Rockies were formed, when some inconsiderate volcanic islands decided not to descend under the North American plate along with the Pacific plate they were carried on, but instead float on to collide with the continent, thus crinkling up, rather dramatically, those previously very well behaved sedimentary rocks.

Back to the present, and the trucks that take you onto the glacier. These are custom made monsters that reach the grand old speed of 12 miles per hour, but have torque to make a macho man feel rather humble, and tyres larger than our children. We were glad of those as we descended the lateral moraine (go on then, look it up) in what seemed like an almost vertical drop to the ice itself, complete with millholes and crevasses that I for one was rather keen to keep the kids away from.

Rowan once again showed her prediliction for becoming one with the things she encounters, and yes – she licked the glacier and drank its reputedly almost miraculous pure water. Hey, maybe that’s why she’s had a temperature and the lurgy Jenna had!

Walking on the glacier was a stunning experience, truly one of those things you want to have ticked off on your list of lifetime achievements. We drove back to Lake Louise cold, tired and happy, to wake the next day to a layer of snow even at the low levels, enough to make a rather dinky snowman. It was time to get out of Dodge. We headed south to Radium Hot Springs to soak our bones in an outdoor pool – yes, in this weather – it was a sultry 40 degrees centigrade in the pool, with steam rising, and we spent a couple of hours immersed with, for once, totally serene kids drifting about in the mist under the shadow of a red canyon cliff. They must have put something in that hot spring water because everyone is quiet and utterly chilled (though luckily not bodily). Rowan proclaimed that she could happily die there. I would have happily joined her.