Juneau

The day after Glacier Bay our ship stopped at Juneau. The town itself was very disappointing, a ‘made for cruise-ship’ town it was just tourist shops, very different from our last cruise. Anyway, we didn’t come here for the town, we came here to hike the West Glacier Trail. After talking to the information centre, we were told that the West Glacier trail was still mostly snow and ice, and that it wouldn’t be safe for us to do that until there was a lot more melt. So we settled on doing the Mt Roberts trail, which turned out to be fantastic. We were surprised, though, when the trail turned to snow and then soon we were in a forest with no track, only heavy snow which we were sometimes sinking up to our thighs with each step. We were really grateful that another couple from Alabama were walking the trail as well, so once there was no trail we stuck together, thinking that at least in the worst case scenario we could just go back down to the start and not complete the trail. After around half an hour of walking in the snow a local guy speedily passed us, we laughed and said to him that he’d obviously walked in snow before as we were all sliding around and each 100m sometimes was taking minutes just because we couldn’t get footing. It turned out to be very lucky that the local passed us, as then we could follow his footprints, and all 4 of us are pretty sure we wouldn’t have found the top if it wasn’t for that. Anyway about an hour later we reached the top, and were instantly pleased that we’d chosen this trail for two reasons; it is the top of the Mt Roberts Tramway, which meant that we could both get the chairlift back down the mountain, and also that there was food and drink at the top. Many drinks later we jumped on the tramway and returned to our ship. Our photos are here.

Glacier Bay

Our day spent cruising Glacier Bay was the most awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, amazing day we have had. Nothing compares to this scenery, and even though the Rockies were utterly mind blowing, Glacier Bay takes first place for natural beauty. (The Rockies are definitely a close second). We spent the whole day from about 6.30am to 8pm out on our balcony, it was simply fantastic.

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Almost the whole day was perfect clear blue skies and still water with either reflections of the mountains, lots of ice, or a mixture of both.

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We spent a couple of hours floating about 100m away from the Grand Pacific and Margaret glaciers (which used to be separate but are advancing and are now joined at the face). The face of the glaciers is 22 stories high, humbling when you’re right next to it! We spent the time here watching the glaciers ’calve’ over and over again – the perfect day, and time of day to see this as it was sunny all day and we were there from about 5-7pm so after all the warm sun we saw the glacier calve around 20 times. The following video is of a piece around 5 stories high falling into the water below. Our photos are here. Our video is here.

Capilano Suspension Bridge

We’re back in Vancouver in between the Rocky Mountaineer and our Alaskan cruise, and this morning we got up early to go to the Capilano Suspension bridge in North Vancouver. To be honest it was a bit overrated, but still a nice morning out. We also stopped by Stanley Park again and saw that the same trees that had no leaves 2 weeks ago and were in full blossom now have lots of leaves and no flowers – the seasons are definitely much more pronounced and fast changing here. Now we’re off for our cruise – we’ll be on there for the next week so not sure how often we’ll update the site. :-)

Dre on the suspension bridge.

The Rocky Mountaineer

We have spent the past two days on the Rocky Mountaineer train, coming back from Banff to Vancouver so that we can get on our Alaskan cruise tomorrow. Once again the scenery was amazing, we didn’t take too many photos, just really enjoyed the scenery and the experience – and with all 7 meals a day and alcohol included, it was a good relaxing way to spend a couple of days. Our photos are here.

Banff

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We’ve had the past couple of days in Banff. There have been two main highlights; we took a scenic helicopter flight over Spray Valley and it was magnificent, and also the view from our room over the Bow Valley and Mountains. On our way here we stopped at a couple of places, to see the Bow Falls, Castle Mountain, the Spiral Tunnels (built for trains to go through, 6km long, and you can sometimes see the end of the train still going into one end of the tunnel when the front is coming out the other end), saw another black bear, and also a view of Banff Springs hotel, the ‘castle’ in the mountains. On our first morning we had an awesome sunrise right in front of our window, with the sun sparkling on the bow river, then we went for our helicopter flight. It was really cool to be close to the mountain tops, see the thick snow on the trees high up, and generally get expansive views that you can’t get any other way. We also went up Sulphur Mountain for the views up there, again beautiful and this time overlooking Cascade Mountain and the valley below. There is still lots of snow around and today we did a bush walk and got snowed on again, yay! A fun town and last night we went to the Rose and Crown for dinner and drinks to see where Soph used to work, cool place Soph! We also saw heaps of Elk – yippee! Our photos are here.

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Lake Louise

After a beautiful drive down the Icefields Parkway we arrived at Lake Louise and went for a walk around the lake along the snowy path to the frozen waterfall beside the lake. It is so gorgeous! Before this trip we were a little disappointed that we wouldn’t see the the bright turquoise blue colour of the lake, but have been so impressed by it’s beauty even when frozen and covered in snow. We a lovely sunny day and then when we woke up it was snowing so we opened our window and let the soft snow float inside our room. Another brilliant day! Our photos are here.

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The Icefields Parkway

We had a fantastic day on the Icefields Parkway – it’s labelled as the best drive in the world, and now after being on it we think that must be pretty accurate, we really can’t imagine what could make it better – it was amazing. We saw mountain after mountain, all uniquely different and all spectacular. We also stopped and walked on the Athabasca Glacier, and were very lucky as it snowed while we were up there. It’s very humbling to be around 2000m above sea level, and to look around and in every direction you can see in there are massive mountains surrounding you. Awesome! Our photos are here.

In the Canadian Wilderness (almost)

We have absolutely loved our time in Jasper. We arrived to this gorgeous view of Lake Beauvert, which our lodge is on the edge of. Our first afternoon was spent walking around the lake, mind blowing beauty surrounded us…. every view of this enormous horse-shoe shaped lake is different and the turquoise-green water is crystal clear. We saw some Elk eating on the path and then wade into the water to drink. They’re huge!! Bigger than horses, it’s crazy to think that they are wild animals wandering around us.

We walked through part of the Golf course and then came back and had a delicious meal at one of the lodge restaurants overlooking Mt Edith Cavell. The next day we went rafting, which at this time of year is really just floating as the snow hasn’t melted much yet and in fact the rafting only opened the day before we took our trip. It was beautiful though, snow and ice edged glacial blue water to float down is not our idea of a bad day. Then we pretty much just chilled and lit a huge fire in our room. We want to come back here for a couple of weeks next time! It’s been fantastic. Our photos are here.

Sun Peaks to Jasper

Another fantastic day here on our trip from Sun Peaks to Jasper. We stopped at a lake that we can’t remember the name of, saw our first Loon which is Canada’s national bird, and also walked around the base of Mt Robson on this beautiful clear day (North America’s highest peak) – we are told that you can only see the peak about once a year, and supposedly this was one of the two best days in the last 12 years!! So our amazing weather luck continues.

This place is stunning under a blue sky. We also saw our first pile of Moose nuggets at Mt Robson which Dre thought was very exciting. Our photos are here. Jasper is amazing and we will put some photos of it up very soon. There are animals everywhere and the lake is gorgeous.

Whistler to Sun Peaks

Whistler was awesome but it was soon time to move on to Sun Peaks, which is also a ski resort in the winter but the season had just finished a week or so before we got here. On the way we saw lots of frozen lakes and also stopped at a massive lake (so massive there is nowhere you can see the entire lake except from the air) near Kamloops.

This picture shows maybe a tenth of the total lake!

There was still heaps of snow to play in at Sun Peaks and we had a great time swimming in the spa beside the snow. Apart from snow fights,there’s not a lot else to do at Sun Peaks though, just a stop off point between Whistler and Jasper, so tomorrow we’re off to Jasper. We can’t wait!!

Dre throwing a snowball at Sun Peaks.

Andrej and Karen Brummer

The adventures of the Brummers

Monthly Archives: May 2009