Icefields

After stopping off at the Lake Louise gondola, we went along the Icefields Parkway to the Columbia Icefields. The parkway itself was interesting as you could spot glaciers on top of the mountains. At the Coumbia Icefields there is a visitor centre and there you can buy tickets to go out onto the Athabasca Glacier (that the big one you can see in the picture on the left). It used to reach along to the road, but global warming means it shrinks a bit each year.
It's not safe to just wander out there so you go out in the special buses with the big huge wheels. You can see Laura & me standing next to our bus in the picture - I'm 5"8 so you can get an idea of the size. It meant that we felt perfectly safe and hardly felt any bumps as we travelled along the glacier.
Once you get right out onto the glacier there is a safe place where you can get out and walk around. That's fun as you get to see more clearly some of the smaller glaciers like the one behind Sarah & me in the picture.
It's just like walking on compacted icy snow, but is strange when you've also been informed that the ice you're standing on is a deep as the height of the Empire State Building! There are also lots of little streams running along so we all got to taste glacial water (I didn't think it was good). You can spot a stream just behind me & Laura in the last picture. We were lucky as it was very cold out there, but the sun came out which made it less chilly and the pictures look great!