Jasper National Park, Alberta - Elk

Elk mother and baby. The baby was born in the spring around April or May, according to our knowledgeable tour guide.

The elk come right into town and their droppings can frequently be seen in someone's lawn. On the way back from our tour, there were two more grazing right on the center divider of the road!

Jasper National Park, Alberta - Shark Tooth Ridge

Jasper National Park, Alberta - Tangle Creek Falls

If you look carefully, there are icicles along the sides of the falls.

Jasper National Park, Alberta

Jasper National Park, Alberta - Icefields

Snow is blown off the top of the peak, with an excellent view of a glacier embedded in the mountainside. (Bluish at center and center-right of photos.)





The river-like rectangular area at the bottom is part of the Columbia Icefield, the largest of several icefields in the area.



More glacier. If you look carefully you can see swatches of silvery-blue peeking out from the snow all over this entire surface.

Banff National Park, Alberta

This last photo shows bits of bluish glacier peeking out from under the snow, center right.

There's more!

But... I just can't keep my eyes open any longer. The rest will have to wait until I can get internet access again.

Banff National Park, Alberta - mountain sheep

These two are females. The mating season has recently passed, so males have gone off by themselves and only the females stick together in groups.

Jasper National Park, Alberta - ravens at the Columbia Icefield

For you, Raven. Close encounters of the bird kind. ;)

The trail guide said he'd never seen them do anything like this in all his 22 years here. Must have been a sign!

Jasper National Park, Alberta - Columbia Icefield

That's us, with the Columbia Icefield in the background (partially obscured by snow). The Columbia Icefield contains several glaciers and is the largest ice mass south of the Arctic Circle, covering roughly 130 square miles to a depth of 1148 feet. Contrary to popular belief, glaciers are not from frozen liquid water but rather get created when the amount of snowfall in a winter is more than what summer can melt away. Over time as this process repeats, the pressure from new snow compacts the layers beneath into a solid mass. The glaciers here have snow from hundreds, or in some places, thousands of years ago.

Jasper National Park, Alberta

Rocks can be dragged by glaciers many miles away from where they originated. If you have flat smooth land area, for example, and suddenly see a large rock that is completely out of place, it is often due to glacial activity.

Jasper National Park, Alberta - rockslide

Our guide informed us that this rockslide occurred quite some time ago. If memory serves, he said it's at least a few hundred years old.

The orange-ish rocks in the front were overturned to make the road. The rest are blackish due to growth of lichens. Interestingly, this is part of nature's recovery process. When bare rock has been exposed due to fire or other upheavals, it's the lichens who begin growing first on the rock surfaces. In time, moss makes its home in the nutrients provided by the lichens. As the moss and lichens continue to reproduce and die, they provide more rich nutrients that can support other plants in what is really the development of new soil. These other plants live, die, and decompose, and soon trees can also take root in the new soil. Eventually it's all covered over by vegetation, and in a case like this, you'd never know there was a rockslide at all. But this process will take hundreds of years.

Jasper National Park, Alberta - coyote

Jasper National Park, Alberta - Athabasca Falls

The water is a turquoise color due to silt from its water source: the melting glaciers to the south between Jasper National Park and Banff National Park.