Athabasca Glacier Tour - On Top of the World in Alberta

Visiting Athabasca Glacier on Alberta’s Columbia Icefields

Brewster Tours has figured out how to sell ice to the world. Great, craggy, massive slabs of ice thousands of years old, kilometers long and thicker than the Eiffel Tower is tall. And the world is buying it.

Bundled in fleece, sporting Ray Bans against the stunning, perfect white of the ice, and brandishing Nikons, people flock from all corners to walk in the shadows of behemoth glaciers at Columbia Icefields in Jasper National Park.

At 7,500 feet above sea level, closer to the sun than many have ever been, they gasp in the thin air at beauty which, quite literally, surrounds them. The glacial melt trickles in rivulets at their feet, and they dip paper cups in crystalline water, then coo at travel mates at the purity of nature. Two kilometers distant and still towering imposingly above, is the head of Athabasca Glacier, the signature of Columbia Icefields, and main attraction for Brewster’s Snocoach run.

The snow there never melts, only piles 20 feet higher every year. Ice bulges from the mounting pressure, then squirts from the icefield to become the headwall of Athabasca Glacier. So begins a six-kilometer journey to the toe, a journey that sees the ice descend 2,600 feet over 300 years, a pace that is, well, glacial.

To the right is the sun-dappled Snow Dome, one of only two mountains in the world whose snowmelt feeds three oceans, the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic. Behind us, tiny in the distance, is the Columbia Icefield Centre, home base to Brewster’s Snocoach Tours, from where the hour-long tours originate every 15 to 30 minutes.

We are shuttled from the Centre to a pick-up point, where we transfer to the lumbering, lovable Snocoach, one of seven such 56-passenger buses. All the while, Brewster’s driver-guides keep a running commentary of what’s happening around us, describing the power of nature, and the unstoppable force of ice.

Moving at a comfortable pace just faster than the glacier itself, the Snocoach travels a constantly shifting road. We will creep back down the steepest passenger route in the world, a white-knuckle 32 per cent grade.

The chatter from the well-informed driver-guides never ends. We get a layman’s lesson in geology and the diminishing size of the glacier. We learn the ice beneath us is moving at a pace of 80 feet a year. And, we learn, the ice is losing its grip on the mountains. In the middle of the last century, the Athabasca Glacier started receding, and still melts away at a rate of 30 feet a year.

The Snocoaches spill their cargo of tourists at a spacious parking lot turnaround, where visitors can frolic and photograph, breath in virgin air and ponder the great block of ice sliding beneath them. Here, it is more than 1,000 feet thick, its surface sliding an imperceptible 2.6 inches a day toward the toe, where it will become the headwater of the MacKenzie River, and begin as a trickle its much swifter journey to the Arctic Ocean.

Truly, the Columbia Icefields experience is an on-top-of-the-world adventure.

If You Go Columbia Icefields, Alberta, Canada:

You can get to the Rockies, and the Columbia Icefields, via Rockymounteer Railtours from Vancouver, or Calgary.At either Banff or Jasper, board a north or southbound Brewster bus trip along the Icefields Parkway, with your stopover at the Icefields and your glacier ride.For information call toll-free 1-800-665-7245,or e-mail: reservations@rkymtnrail.com.Website www.rkymtnrail.com.

Brewster’s Columbia Icefield Snocoach Tours originate from the Icefields Interpretive Centre , 103 km south of Jasper on Highway 93, the Icefields Parkway.For information, contact Brewster Tours,Phone: (403) 762-6753Fax: (403) 762-2794E-mail icefield@brewster.ca.

You can easily access the toe of the glacier from the highway, but it’s best to visit the interpretive centre first, where displays give the storied history of the discovery of the icefields. There’s also a restaurant and a cafe, and here’s where you sign up for the Snocoach Tour. For those who prefer to hike, the centre will hook you up with guided walks over the lower reaches of the glacier.

Author: Rob DeMone