Don’t be surprised if it gets really cold when you go out on a glacier.
Starting out from Radium Hot Springs in the morning the 103-degree temps of Vernal, Utah, had given way to a cool 50s. Time to actually add an extra layer, at least for a while. The Banff-Windemere Highway passed through an impossibly narrow defile into the canyon we would go up and we climbed and climbed.
Starting out had not been uneventful, however. Jungle was having trouble getting Willie’s FJ to start. Uh oh. It turned out to be a simple fix, though. Add water to the completely dry battery. OK, we’re rolling.
These tall, jagged mountains we’d been looking at were now the tall, jagged mountains we were riding into. Then, for a long way we followed the Kootenay River up the broad, glacial valley. Here, the mountains towered above us and it was one jagged mountain after another, on and on. Some were absolutely pointed at the very top and I had a need to understand this topography.
It turns out that back during a distant ice age, this entire area was buried under thousands of feet of snow and ice. Most of these mountains were completely buried, with just a few of the very tallest poking a bit of their peaks above. The snow was compressed into ice and became a glacier and followed the path of least resistance downhill. Along the way, over the centuries, the glacier cut away the sides of the buried mountains, leaving a broad, U-shaped valley. That explains why on the side of the mountains facing the valley they are steep and sheer. Cut away the side of a cone and you end up with something similar.
On and on we went, along the river and past numerous lakes. We stopped for lunch at Bow Lake, which Willie tells us is like Lake Louise 40 years ago, which is to say, quiet and undeveloped.
Then we started climbing. And climbing. At this point Judy was feeling the consequences of wearing her mesh jacket and I was zipping closed the vents in my leather jacket. The sky was also growing gray and threatening. But then we arrived at the day’s destination, the Glacier View Inn, right across the road from the Athabasca Glacier. Our rooms were not ready yet so we stashed our gear and went on our planned glacier tour.
Glaciers are very cool, in more ways than one. They took us up there in vehicles with huge tires and geared so that when we went down one slope that was a 37 percent grade it just acted like this was the most normal thing in the world. And it got cold out on the glacier. Some people were wearing shorts and flip-flops. Some people perceive cold a little differently than I do.
Biker Quote for Today
Life, five gallons at a time.
