Of Mountains and Madalyn

Just a few short notes on our recent road trip..



July 12th - 1100 km drive to Medicine Hat, Alberta followed the enxt day by a 500 km drive to the mountain resort town of Banff, pictured below in a view from one of the gondolas going to the top of Sulfur Mountain. Lots of great places to walk and see, or in our case hobble as Jane lost an argument with a gopher burrow on a trail at Lake Minnewanka on our first night there.





July 14th explored around Banff - below the Vermilion Lake wetlands, just outside of town.





The legendary Lake Louise, about an hour north of Banff - nearby Moraine Lake is pretty spectacular too if you have the patience to wait for a parking spot to open so that you can drive in.







Below is the entrance to Mistaya Canyon, one of a number of incredibly narrow canyons where rivers drop off plateaus through narrow crevasses in the rock.



Bow Glacier and Lake, which feed the Bow river which ultimately flows through downtown Calgary.


July 15th - The Columbia Icefields. We came here with the kids in 1992 on a camping trip and Jane is standing where the Athabasca glacier ended at that time - it has now receded about 200 metres and it is likely to completely disappear in coming years at current rates of warming.

July 16th - Above the treeline on Marmot mountain overlooking Jasper (you get most of the way up by gondola, but it still a pretty steep and rough hike to the top).

Maligne Canyon near Jasper. This river arises from a series of alpine lakes, one of which (Medicine Lake) disappears at the end of each summer as it drains out underground, and refills each spring when the snow melt flows in faster than it can leave.



The wildlife can get up close and personal. We met this bull elk in the Jasper hotel car park; they look cute but they can be quite dangerous particularly during the breeding season.
July 17th to 25th - And then on to Fort St John - Madalyn promoting avoidance of excessive sun exposure; the hat was Claire's at the same age!

Madalyn with an early first birthday present that was a joint project - Malcolm built it, Jane painted it.

A view of the Peace River Valley that may not last - there is a proposal for a new hydro-electric dam to be built near Fort St John that will flood much of the valley up to the existing Peace canyon dam. The proposal seems to rest on a "lesser of all evils" concepts and obviously is provoking some strong sentiments.

Arguments for can be found at: http://www.sqwalk.com/blog/000409.html

Arguments against can be found at: http://sierralegal.org/media_articles/media05_06_29.html

July 25th - 27th We then went to Prince George for 2 days and 3 nights, where what had been planned as some more unofficial discussions about future career opportunities at the University of Northern British Columbia that might support move nearer to Claire, Chris and Madalyn rapidly became a formal job interview process for a very high level position. More on this later. Suffice to say that we had cause to have a good look at real estate around this mountain city at the junction of the Fraser and Nachako rivers.

Prince George is less than 4 hours drive from Jasper (and a lovely mountain drive it is) with the attendant mountain wildlife, like this young black bear. The road passes by Mount Robson, the highest point in the Canadian rockies. We went home this way, driving to Edmonton on the 28th (760 km in 9 hours), then back over the prairies to Winnipeg (1420 km in 14 hours) the next day.