While In The Canadian Rockies, Take Some Side Trips

If you take a trip to the Canadian Rockies, there are two side trips that you will not want to miss. Do not get me wrong. The trip up the Icefields Parkway from Banff to Jasper is nothing less than awesome. You could live a lifetime looking out at the vistas there and yet each time would be more wonderful that the last.

Yet, outside the park lies two experiences that you should not die without experiencing. The top one is Mt. Robson, the tallest mountain in the Canadian Rockies. Standing at the base, you look up about 8,000 feet at a monster of a mountain. In fact, the relief on this mountain, distance from where you view to top, is greater than any mountain there. It verticality for that long distance is what makes it so special. You are privy to a world where the base temperature where you are standing may be 70 degrees, but the top of the vertical cliffs are probably well below freezing. From the visitors center, you may hike whatever distance you choose, but the trails are steep.

The bottom picture is a picture taken from Rogers Pass in Canada's Glacier National Park in the Selkirk Mountains, just west of the Rockies Range. It is accessed along Canadian Route 1A from the Icefields Parkway, through Yoho National Park and through the valley between the two ranges.

Traveling from the valley floor to Rogers Pass, the cliffs are very vertical and you never have a good view of what is out there. To add to that, you pass through many avalanche tunnels that protect the road. It is not until you reach the pass and look back that you see this view. This is avalanche central and it is in this location that the Canadian government developed the use of howitzers to cause avalanches. Howitzer placements can be found throughout the area.

This area of the Selkirks is where a lot of avalanche deaths of skiers take place. A couple of years ago, there were two such incidents that took a total of 9 lives. Because it lies to the west of the Rockies, it gets much more snow than the Rockies. This particular view from Rogers Pass gives you some idea of what awaits a visitor to the Selkirks. They are Awesome

After losing a lot of time, trains, and lives, the Canadian Railroad finally built the Connaught Tunnel under Rogers Pass, a distance of 5 miles. Canada, unlike our country, really does its business by rail and the loss of time was a luxury they could not afford.