More Mountains


 Lots and Lots of Mountains in Alberta.


One image I liked includes a bus we took for some of the tour.  

 

It also has Cascade Mountain in the background and both Ann  and I.  This was at the present Canadian Parks HQ in Banff (originally built as a sanitarium for TB patients). Banff is an odd name but the founder of the city was from Banff in Scotland and took the name from there.


I had Mount Edith Cavelle in this blog earlier. But that was a view from the west. This is a view from the east. It was taken at about 5000' in elevation. The sign points to the mountain and I thought the sign was interesting (click on image to enlarge).

The next image is of me in front of a hotel with Cascade Mountain in the background.

This hotel was once the HQ of the Canadian RR with living quarters and offices for employees. It was made of wood and in 1928 it burned down.


It was rebuilt into a hotel. It has room for over 700 guests and requires a staff of over 1000 (click to enlarge). 

 

Ann is in the lower left but in the upper middle is the mountains known as the Three Sisters. I took this on the bus on the way to Calgary. 


We went on the Alberta Icefield Parkway skybridge. It was a bit scary so the pictures I took didn't come out well.  But I've included an image from somebody called the culture bridge.

The bridge is next to the Icefield Parkway very near the Athabasca Glacier.  The mountains in the background are the eastern border of the Columbia Icefield.



The roads in western Alberta all generally follow the course of major rivers.  The final mountain image I am including was taken in the Saskatchewan River Valley.  There were mountains on both sides of the valley.



Speaking of River Valleys, the map shows the important drainage basins in Alberta.  The Athabasca basin (purple)  and Peace basin (light green) drain into the Arctic Ocean.  The Saskatchewan River (yellow and blue) flows into Lake Winnipeg. The Bow River, which flows through Calgary, is a major tributary of the Saskatchewan.  BTW, several US rivers drain into Lake Winnipeg, including the Red River in North Dakota.  Lake Winnipeg in turns drains into Hudson Bay.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jasper Alberta

Image
Again it was hot but I'm discontinuing the temperature reports I did earlier. The hot weather was clear, very clear leading to some impressive views: The first image is a Medicine Lake. This lake famously disappears in October as the runoff from the surrounding area ends and the lake water goes into underground channels. The disappearance of the lake made the Indians call it 'bad medicine lake", but as the cause became known, it was rebranded.    The next image is of me at Maligne Lake. It was called that because the European discover had a number of disasters in his discovery.  The part of the lake you can see is called the "Hall of the Gods". A large snowfield, under which is probably a glacier, is on top of the mountains behind me and to my right. Note the 'no cloud' conditions.  We could still see the moon at 12:15pm.  The next image is up close of a pine tree that has been badly infected by the Rocky Mountain Bark Beatle - this critter is causing inc
Read more

Hoo Doos and the Banff Gondola

Image
  Another Highlight of this trip is that Ann felt less aerophobia than in other trips and we both rode an air Gondola.  First image at about 7500' at the top of Sulpher Mountain, only 3 miles from Banff. The Banff gondola is one of 4 gondola systems in the general area.  The second image is of Ann while riding in the Gondola - on the way down. Before this trip I had never heard of Hoo Doos.  In the third image (need to click to enlarge, there are some Hoo Doos white colored formations near my left shoulder - in the Bow River valley with Mount Rundle in the right top corner of the image.  Hoo Doos are spires of rock created by rain and especially valley wind erosion.  They are fairly common in the western US river valleys where they are also called tent pillar or earth fairies.  The next image is from Bryce Canyon, Utah which shows a whole lot of hoo doos. .
Read more

Day 3 Kamloops to Jasper

Image
 Max 17 August temp in Jasper (~53N and 5000' was 81F). Max at National Airport was 85F. We follow the North Thompson River almost all the way to Jasper.  First image shows the river as we crossed it at one point. The aqua color is partly due to fine dust formed by glaciers at the source of the river and partly due to silt it picked up on the way.  If there were no silt, it would be more blue. One of the sad things along this trip was how much of the Thompson plateau had been marred by a massive fire about 20 years earlier. The fire was a linear only burning one side of a hill but it went on for what seems like 10 miles or so.  Second image shows the current situation where some of the burnt trees are still standing and the vegetation is slowly healing. The plateau, near where the fire was, only gets about 10-15" of rain. Click to enlarge so you can see the burn problem. There were some magnificent sights along the way. One was a waterfall called pyramid falls. Image 3 shows t
Read more