On Day 3 in the Canadian Rockies, Stephanie and I drove the Icefields Parkway north from Lake Louise to Jasper National Park. It was an enjoyable day that included walking on Athabasca Glacier, hiking around Mt. Edith Cavell, and staying in a lovely chalet outside of Jasper, Alberta. Unfortunately, it was also a gray, rainy day, and none of the pictures from our third day of vacation were particularly impressive. I did take some shots of memorable stops along the way, and I'll link to them eventually.
But for now, I'll jump ahead to Day 4, when we left Jasper and headed back to Banff National Park for two nights in the town of Banff itself. Day 4 included a bear sighting, a return trip to Moraine Lake, and some shots of Mt. Rundle and its reflection in Vermillion Lakes.
This particular shot of Mt. Rundle illustrates one of the most fascinating aspects of the Canadian Rockies- namely, that they are remarkably different from the American Rockies. Mt. Rundle and many other mountains near Banff show their youth- they look like a continental plate that has been driven upwards after colliding with another plate, which is precisely what they are. Because they are so young, their eastern faces remain smooth, having not yet had time to have been textured by erosion.
Stephanie and I spent a lot of time comparing these young mountains to the mountains we know best, the Appalachians of western North Carolina, which are one of the oldest mountain ranges on Earth. One of the striking things to us was how two ranges so different in appearance could both be so beautiful.
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