For The Love of Travel

A whole day of bus travel in rain through the Cayoosh Range and Canyon, narrow and twisting with a rock wall between 5-7,000 ft in height, with the highway clinging to the mountainface. It’s a zone of extreme aridity and high summer temperatures, featuring lizards, cactus, and sagebrush. “Nkoomptch” is the historical name for this locality historically and means “water crossing over” in the St’at’imcets language.

Cayoosh Falls to the Fraser river was the scene of the Cayoosh Gold Rush of the 1880s, in which 300 Chinese gold miners were estimated by the local Government Agent to have taken out around $6 million in gold. The creek’s riverbed throughout this stretch was literally turned upside down and remains of Chinese gold-mills and gold-furnaces can be found near the Hydro campsite, as well as piles of washed rocks which are byproducts of Chinese mining methods.

We set off on our rafting expedition…..check out my brave young fellow traveller….ha, ha

Rafting on the Athabasca River later in the afternoon delivered great views….I admired the gorgeous mountain backdrop of Roche Bonhomme, aka Old Man Mountain on the Colin’s Range. The trail goes pretty much straight up the mountain alongside a runoff stream, which tumbles down from one of the avalanche paths. The mountain looks like an old man looking into the sky and the various avalanche paths form his headdress, as if he were a native chief in the mountain. The summit is the bonhomme’s forehead.

And then as we floated, we just caught sight of some elk silhouettes…and then up close at Jasper Park Lodge later.

We travelled from Jasper to Mt Robson National Parks today seeing gorgeous cloud formations, water lilies and BEAR!!!!

 

The Jasper SkyTram whisks you up Whistler’s Mountain to an elevation of 2277 metres for stunning vistas over mountain ranges stretching up to 80 km away. We didn’t see a bear or hoary marmot (aka Mountain Whistler)…. But we did see a (wascaly) pika….a small mammal, with short limbs, rounded ears, and no external tail. Despite their rodent-like appearance, pikas are actually closely related to rabbits and hares. Pikas defend their territory by whistling to one another, and their large, rounded ears come in useful to hear the calls from competing pikas. They forage for grasses, seeds, weeds, thistles and berries during the day.

And the dude with the very cute dog, Lola, was on the Skytram as we went down!  She’s coolly surveying the horizon.