Banff National Park: Ice Fields Parkway
The Ice Fields Parkway runs 142 glorious miles between the towns of Jasper and Banff in Alberta, Canada. The entire corridor is situated within Banff and Jasper National Parks. So, there is not only seemingly endless wilderness and beauty, but also very few options for accommodations (and even gas!) between these two towns. If you really want to be in the thick of it, as we did, camping is the best option because it allows you to hang out right in the heart of the parks. We had three days totally unplugged to do just that.
We snagged a spot at Waterfowl Lakes, our first first-come, first-served campground. The process was surprisingly informal. The directive from the camp host was to just drive around until we found an open site where we could fit.
We met a family staying at a campsite just a few spots down. They had six kids between 18 months and 11 years old. They were camping for a week in a single tent. They homeschool. They seemed totally at ease all the time. In other words, this is the kind of family that clearly would have made it to California on the Oregon Trail, while we, in the same circumstance, would have died trying to cross a river or hunt a duck somewhere.
Making kid friends is the magic ingredient to having a good time camping: It took a little coaxing, but the second night found them all running wild in the woods, as one should, hosting a fort-making competition and eating s’mores by the fire.
The first afternoon after we settled into camp, we doubled back to Bow Summit and walked up to the Peyto Lake viewpoints. The first viewpoint is both paved and well-marked, but also very crowded. The additional viewpoints required following less obvious trails, usually blazed by sending Eli ahead and having him call back to the rest of us with an all-clear. We ended up leading a group of two other families up the side of a mountain with no promise of delivering the goods. But, in the end, we triumphed, and the views were amazing.
Our second day, we continued north, towards Jasper, stopping first at Ranger Falls and then going on to the Columbia Ice Field. Here, Ben, Eli and I did a strenuous hike up Parker’s Ridge which was not only steep, but snowy and muddy, making it extra challenging. Ben persevered, despite his protests, and we were able to see the Saskatchewan glacier from the summit.
We left Eli to work for a bit at a particularly striking picnic spot. The kids and I hit up the Visitor’s Center at the base of the Athabasca glacier, managing to avoid the seductive lure of the Starbuck’s, but succumbing to the overpriced Glacier Sky Walk, a glass-floored lookout over the valley. The best part of this activity were the bus rides to and from the sky walk, which featured witty guides that made jokes that Ben especially enjoyed.
On the third morning, rain loomed on the horizon. We started the most difficult hike we had planned for the area, hiking from Bow Lake to Lake Helen, which would have covered seven miles. We got about two-thirds of the way up before I called it and turned us around. We had already hiked above the cloud line and even if we had made it all the way to Lake Helen, we likely would not have been rewarded by much in the way of sweeping views. This way, we avoided having cranky and hungry kids.
Instead, we went back to the lodge at Bow Lake for a snack and then made a final stop at Mistaya Canyon before returning to camp.
By this time, the skies were really threatening. Eli persisted through a whole lot of wet and cold to make a fire. We all ate rainy s’mores before finally calling it a night, staying a word of thanks our trailer is so cozy in the cold.
This was our longest dry-camping run of this trip, meaning the longest we would go without supporting water or electricity hook-ups. This year we cracked the code and managed to make our battery and water supply last for the duration. This is what eluded us last year when we were dry camping in Arizona and California and we were pretty proud to know how to troubleshoot so much at this point.
