Day 55: What a Wonderful World.

It was one of the most glorious days: The portion of HWY 93 called Icefield PKWY was standing up to its reputation as one of the most scenic drives in the world. It indeed helped that the sun came up, and there was some fresh, bright snow at the very top of the mountains from the storm last night (OMG: Snow in August) . Further, what’s terrible for the Glacier is impressive for the rivers. A week of 90+ Farenhite set the Glacier to a peak melting pace, and the flooding from the heavy rain last night added their portion of the flow to the rivers.
Our first stop was Athabasca Falls which exploded with turbulent water.
2 Miles out of the falls, we got our best treat of the day. On the side of the road, we spotted a couple of cars pulling. A huge Grizzly bear was roaming there, digging the ground for roots and dining the local berries. We were patient with it, enjoying the view, as he was coming very close to our car,
(less than 20 feet), stretched up on two, stood tall, bent his back towards a pine tree, and got himself a back-scrub—what a fantastic view.
Sunwpata falls had equally impressive flows, and we hiked to the lower falls- a well-worth short and easy hike in the middle of the way.
Unlike what we remembered from our 2009 trip, we could park at the bottom of the Athabasca glacier and hike 1.4 Km to the toe. What surprised us was that the Glacier itself was accessible, and we hiked on the ice all the way up to where the gigantic ice-modified buses were unloading tourists. It was fun but depressing. The Glacier had much receded (5 Meter per year) since we saw it last and looked pale and sick. It is sad to see a dying Glacier.
The road continued to offer countless “WOW” statments from Ruti and me – interchangeably. The “desert” of the day was a stop at the beautiful vista point overlooking Peyto Lake and its emerald water.
What a wonderful world it is!