Canada Columbia Ice Field
August 8, 1998
It was one of those touristy kinds of things that we usually avoid. It cost $25 per person in Canadian dollars or about $16 US dollars for a 1 ½ hour ride. We debated for a short time, then decided, what the heck, we are tourists! The opportunity to ride a snocoach on a Rocky Mountain glacier in Jasper National Park, Alberta, was too good to pass. The snocoach holds about 60 passengers and crawls across the Athabasca Glacier ice on large, low-pressure tires. The tires are about six feet tall and very wide. The
snocoach has six of these tires, each connected to the drive train so
that we were essentially riding a six-wheel-drive vehicle.
Our driver was a young woman, maybe in her mid-20's,
who kidded us that she was really a dishwasher, who was asked to drive
today because the real driver did not report to work. A sign in the cab of the snocoach explained that her name was Vanessa Ramos. Vanessa Ramos? Let’s see – the name sounds like someone with Spanish ancestry. But this is Canada, where one expects to have a driver with American Indian, Eskimo, French, English or maybe Scottish ancestry. She had long, black, shiny hair, and a flashing smile exposing straight, white teeth. Her spiel was well- rehearsed and delivered with the confidence of a seasoned stage performer. She kept us well entertained throughout the trip with her witty script and explanations of glacier information.
We started down the lateral glacial moraine (rocks dumped on the side of the glacier as it melts) on an 18-degree slope. “Would you like to see how fast we can go down?” she teased. The passengers had not yet warmed to the game, so she received only a mixed response. “Fasten your seatbelts!” We searched frantically for our belts -- there were none. Realizing that we’d just been “had,” we all laughed. Starting down the steep slope, we crept along at about a walking speed in a very low gear. To show how fast we could go in low gear, she gave the snocoach the gas. The
speed increased maybe a mile per hour down the steep slope and it
became obvious that our snocoach would not slide down the moraine and
crash at the bottom. Apprehensions of the passengers concerning the dangers of riding this vehicle seemed to largely evaporate. The
white knuckles on Pat’s hands, that had been holding tightly onto the
rail of the seat in front of us, began to turn back to their normal
color.
We passed a large bulldozer that is used every day to smooth the ice road across the glacier. Vanessa explained, “Enough ice melts every day in the hot summer to create large potholes.” As we entered the ice, there was a small lake in the road. “This is the tire-washing pond,” she explained. “Dirt
from the tires of our snocoach left on the ice will cause it to melt
faster, so we wash the tires before driving on the ice.”
In the information center, we had read of the dangers of walking on the glacier without a guide.
"Don’t walk about on the glacier; you might fall through a snow bridge over a hidden crevasse. If you don’t die from the fall into the crevasse, you are likely to die of hypothermia before you can be rescued. A newspaper clipping, reporting the death of a German tourist who fell into such a crevasse, is tacked to a display board. Rescuers had to chip his dead, blue body out of the blue glacial ice. So when driving across the glacier, Pat asks, “How do we know that there is not a hidden crevasse under this road? Maybe this whole bus will fall into one.” Vanessa
stopped the snocoach beside one large crevasse beside the road so that
we could look down into the seemingly bottomless hole in the blue ice. Her
intent was clear when she explained that, “When we stop to let you walk
on the glacier, you should not wander too far from the snocoach. It is dangerous! Be back on the bus in 15 minutes.” she said. Now I could see a second reason for not wanting us to wander. Time is money – if snocoaches must wait for wandering passengers, they are losing money.
We took in the magnificent view, drank a little melted glacier water, took a few photos and got back on the bus. On
the way back Vanessa named all the surrounding mountains, pointed out
the hiking trails in the area, and shook our hands as we left the bus.
Later, Pat and I hiked up a trail to the toe of the glacier where we could climb up again onto the ice. Along the way were markers showing the glacier limits every few years. The Athabasca and other glaciers in the area are in retreat -- they are melting and growing smaller every year. They have been melting this way over the last 10,000 years -- since the last glacial period. This process will continue until the climate changes and another ice age starts. The crevasses at the edge of the glacier were only a few feet deep so we felt fairly safe climbing on the ice. A sign warned about the soft mud near the edge of the ice. A small boy with mud up to his ankles came walking by -- his mother did not project the image of a “happy camper.” The
wind blowing off the glacier was very chilly, but did not deter those
practicing ice-climbing into and out of the shallow crevasses. Through our binoculars, we could see a couple of climbers ascending the near vertical face of a hanging glacier high above us. Their dark bodies contrasted against the white and blue ice made them easier to see. They moved very slowly and deliberately.
After viewing the exhibits in the visitor’s center, we
started back the 60 miles to the campground -- tired but satisfied with
another day of gentle adventures in the Canadian Rockies.
