July 4, 2024 – Thursday (Happy 4th of July)
Today we finally had a day with no rain and sunny blue skies. Eva made French toast for breakfast, and we had an enjoyable morning in the sun.
Later we left camp and drove to Tangle Falls and took a few pictures. We then took a short hike to the Toe of the Athabaska Glacier. Well, they didn’t let you get too close to the snow and ice.
In the afternoon we took a tour that took us onto the Athabasca Glacier that is just below the Columbia Icefield. The Columbia Icefield is the largest icefield outside of the Arctic. The icefield is like a frozen lake on top of the mountains and then there are 6 glaciers that are pushed over the mountains like frozen rivers from the frozen lake. The Athabasca Glacier is the 2nd largest glacier and the easiest to get to.
We rode to the middle of the glacier on the large ice explorer buses. These 6-wheel drive buses have huge tires to drive over the rock rubble leading up to the glacier and then float on the snow and ice of the glacier. It was an interesting drive in these huge buses.
We spend some time on the glacier. We both took a sip of the ice-cold glacier water, straight from the ice.
After the glacier we went to the Glacier Skywalk. This is a glass bottom arch that stretches out over a glacier fed river in the bottom of a 1000 ft canyon. It was interesting, but way over-crowded. They had ½ of the arch closed as they had replaced a few sections of glass.
We made it back to camp in Wilcox campground just before 8 pm and ate leftovers for dinner. It was a long tiring day.
Corey & Eva's Travels 