Best Days on the Road

"Most people drive it in three hours. The correct time is two days."

The Icefields Parkway — Highway 93 North in the language of the Alberta government — runs 232 kilometres between Lake Louise and Jasper through the heart of the Canadian Rockies. It passes through Banff and Jasper National Parks, two UNESCO World Heritage Sites that together protect one of the last intact mountain ecosystems on the continent. It is, by most measures, the most spectacular paved road in the world.

The problem is that most people drive it in three hours. They leave Lake Louise at nine in the morning, stop at the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre for forty-five minutes, and arrive in Jasper in time for lunch. They have technically driven the Icefields Parkway. They have not experienced it.

The road was built between 1931 and 1940 as a Depression-era relief project, employing unemployed men who lived in camps along the route and worked through winters that regularly dropped to minus forty. The original road was a rough gravel track. The modern highway follows much the same alignment, threading between peaks that rise to over 3,000 metres on both sides, crossing rivers fed by glaciers that have been retreating since the end of the last ice age.

There are 100 viewpoints along the route. Most are signed. Some of the best are not. The Weeping Wall — a 100-metre cliff face that seeps water in summer and freezes into a curtain of ice in winter — has no official sign. The Herbert Lake pullout, which gives the best reflection of the mountains in still water, is easy to miss at speed. The Cirque of the Towers viewpoint above Bow Lake requires a short walk. None of these are on the standard itinerary.

Just Gerald's recommendation: drive it north to south, starting in Jasper. The light is better on the mountains in the afternoon when you're heading south, and the Columbia Icefield — the largest accumulation of ice in the Rocky Mountains south of Alaska — is more dramatic when you approach it from the north, where it fills the entire horizon. Allow two days minimum. One day is not enough.

"The colour is real. It is caused by glacial flour — rock ground to powder by the glacier above and suspended in the meltwater."

Peyto Lake sits at 1,860 metres above sea level in Banff National Park, fed by the Peyto Glacier above it. The colour of the water is an improbable turquoise — the kind of colour that looks digitally enhanced in photographs but is, in fact, exactly what you see when you stand at the Bow Summit viewpoint and look down.

The colour is caused by glacial flour: rock ground to an extraordinarily fine powder by the glacier as it moves, carried into the lake by meltwater, and suspended in the water column. The particles are small enough to scatter blue and green light, giving the lake its characteristic colour. The effect is most intense in July and August, when glacial melt is at its peak. By September, as melt slows and the flour settles, the colour fades toward a more conventional blue-green.

The standard viewpoint is a 700-metre walk from the Bow Summit parking area — the highest point on the Icefields Parkway at 2,069 metres. The walk takes about ten minutes and is paved. The view from the top is one of the most photographed in Canada. It is also, genuinely, worth the photograph.

What most people miss: the extended trail continues another 1.5 kilometres to a higher viewpoint that looks down on the standard viewpoint and gives a wider perspective of the lake, the Mistaya Valley, and the mountains beyond. It takes an extra thirty minutes and is almost always empty. The view is significantly better.

Named after Bill Peyto, an eccentric English-born guide and trapper who worked in the Rockies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He reportedly kept a bear cub as a pet and wore a buckskin coat to town. He is buried in Banff. The lake was named after him in 1931.

"The Athabasca Glacier has retreated 1.5 kilometres since 1844. The markers along the trail show exactly where the ice stood in each decade."

The Columbia Icefield is the largest accumulation of ice in the Rocky Mountains south of Alaska. It covers 325 square kilometres and feeds eight major glaciers, including the Athabasca, which is the only one accessible by road. The meltwater from the Columbia Icefield drains into three oceans: the Pacific via the Columbia River, the Atlantic via the North Saskatchewan River, and the Arctic via the Athabasca River. It is one of the few places on earth where you can stand on a continental hydrological divide.

The Athabasca Glacier is the most visited glacier in North America. This is partly because it is visible from the highway and partly because the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre — a large visitor facility operated by Pursuit — sits directly opposite it. The Discovery Centre has a hotel, a restaurant, a café, and a viewing platform. It is also the departure point for the Glacier Adventure, a tour that takes visitors onto the glacier in large all-terrain vehicles called Ice Explorers.

The glacier walk is worth doing once. The Ice Explorer tour is not the most elegant way to experience a glacier, but it puts you on the ice, which is something. The guided walk on the glacier surface is better — smaller groups, more time, more information. Book in advance.

What is genuinely excellent: the café in the Discovery Centre. It serves a very good bowl of soup and a competent flat white. Given that this is the only food stop for 100 kilometres in either direction, it has no competition. But the soup is actually good.

The retreat markers along the trail to the glacier toe are the most affecting thing here. The 1844 marker is at the highway. The 1900 marker is a ten-minute walk. The current glacier toe is another fifteen minutes beyond that. The ice has retreated 1.5 kilometres in 180 years. The rate of retreat is accelerating.

"The Crossing Resort at Saskatchewan River Crossing is the only fuel and food stop between Lake Louise and Jasper. Plan accordingly."

The honest answer about food on the Icefields Parkway is this: there is almost none of it. The road passes through two national parks, which means no commercial development outside of a handful of designated visitor facilities. This is, in most respects, exactly as it should be. It is also worth knowing before you leave Lake Louise with an empty tank and no snacks.

Saskatchewan River Crossing — The Crossing Resort At the junction of Highway 93 and Highway 11, roughly halfway between Lake Louise and Jasper, the Crossing Resort is the only fuel stop and the only sit-down food option on the entire Parkway. The restaurant serves standard Canadian diner food — burgers, sandwiches, soup, pie. It is not remarkable. It is also, at certain moments, the most welcome building you have ever seen. The pie is better than it has any right to be.

Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre Café As noted above: genuinely good soup, competent coffee, reasonable prices given the captive audience. The restaurant upstairs is more ambitious and less successful. The café is the right choice.

Num-Ti-Jah Lodge, Bow Lake The oldest lodge on the Parkway, built in 1937 by Jimmy Simpson, a legendary Rockies guide. The dining room serves lunch and dinner with a menu that leans into the heritage of the place — elk, bison, trout. The building itself is worth stopping for: a hand-hewn log structure with a circular staircase and a stone fireplace. Book ahead for dinner. Lunch is more casual.

The practical advice: Pack a proper lunch from Banff or Lake Louise before you start. The Parkway is not the place to be hungry and optimistic. A thermos of good coffee, a sandwich from Evelyn's Coffee Bar in Banff, and a piece of fruit will serve you better than any of the above.

"Jasper is a small town that has not yet decided to become a resort. This is its great virtue."

Jasper sits at the confluence of the Athabasca and Miette rivers, surrounded by mountains on all sides, at the northern end of the Icefields Parkway. It has a population of about 5,000 people, a main street that takes four minutes to walk end to end, and a quality of light in the evenings that is unlike anywhere else in the Rockies.

It is also, crucially, not Banff. Banff is a resort town that has fully committed to being a resort town — the shops sell luxury goods and branded merchandise, the restaurants are polished and expensive, the streets are busy with international tourists who have come specifically to shop and eat. This is not a criticism. Banff is very good at being Banff. But Jasper is something different: a working mountain town that happens to have exceptional food and a national park on its doorstep.

Coco's Café (608 Patricia St) is the best breakfast in Jasper and possibly in the Rockies. The space is small, the tables are close together, and the menu is handwritten on a chalkboard. The eggs Benedict is made with house-cured salmon. The coffee is excellent. There is always a queue. Join it.

Jasper Brewing Company (624 Connaught Dr) was the first brew pub in a Canadian national park. The Rockies Radler — lemon and grapefruit with a light lager — is the correct drink after a day on the Parkway. The food is better than pub food has any right to be.

The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge sits on the shores of Lac Beauvert, five kilometres from town. The main lodge was built in 1922 and has been hosting guests ever since. The Emerald Lounge serves afternoon tea. The golf course is one of the most scenic in Canada. It is expensive and worth it for one night.

The dark sky preserve around Jasper is the largest in the world. On a clear night, the Milky Way is visible with the naked eye. This is the correct way to end a day on the Icefields Parkway.