ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE

1st – 6th July 2008 ROCKY MOUNTAIN HOUSE

Rocky is ideally located, 2 hours from Edmonton, 2 hours from Calgary, 2 hours from Jasper and 2 hours from Banff. It has a population of about 7000 and growing, with lots of new development happening. Rocky is the home of a long time friend of my family.
Jean is the widow of a man, John, who, with our dad, opened up a Deloittes office, in the early 50’s, in Umtali, Southern Rhodesia.
This was our home town for about 20 years, during which time the federation of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland was dismantled, and Southern Rhodesia became simply Rhodesia. Later, after independence in 1981, Rhodesia’s name was changed to Zimbabwe and Umtali was renamed Mutare.

Jean moved to Rocky a few years ago to be closer to her daughter Sarah and her husband Steve and children Sean and Anna, who live just a few blocks away from her.
I hadn’t seen Jean or Sarah since the early 80’s and it was wonderful to reconnect. We got together for part of each day we were there except for Thursday. That day Eric and I drove directly west to Jasper National Park.

It was a very beautiful drive. There was something thrilling for me as, in the far distance, I first caught just little glimpses of the mountains. Then as we moved closer they came into view more and more completely. What a magnificent sight, mountains of varying colours, textures and depths. There were fingers of ice following some of the gullies downward, and in other places, depending on the light, I could see what looked like the trunks and bare branches of trees. As we drove along the angles changed and so did the mountain faces. Clouds topped some of the peaks, sometimes like cotton wool, sometimes more like a gauzy mist. Traveling along with us beside the road was Abraham Lake, sometimes wide and spacious, sometimes confined by the rocky topography, always simply filling in the space available to it. Abraham Lake is the reservoir of a dam in the North Saskatchewan River.

Our destination that day was the Columbia Icefield and the Athabasca Glacier, the largest body of ice in the Rockies. It once formed part of an enormous ice sheet that carved the landforms that are now the Rocky mountains. Today it is also a catch basin for tourists. Still, it is a way to confine the wear and tear to one area, and we did get lots of great information at the Columbia Icefield Centre. From the centre we could look across to the Athabasca and Andromeda mountains, which was especially interesting to us as Alan has climbed these snow and ice covered peaks.
We took a 90 minute interpretive excursion onto the Athabasca Glacier “aboard a Brewster Ice Explorer Snocoach”. In this way we were able to get to and walk on the glacier and at the same time be regaled with interesting details by our gregarious guide from Quebec.
I was most fascinated to learn that the Snodome mountain which we could see from the bus, is the source of 3 rivers which simply put, flow in 3 different directions to 3 different oceans: the Athabasca river flows northwards and circuitously makes its way to the Arctic Ocean; the Saskatchewan River is used in the oilsands oil production and flows east to Hudson Bay and ultimately to the Atlantic Ocean; and the Columbia river flows south through BC and Washington, then west to Oregon and on to the Pacific Ocean.
This trip was also a reconnaissance one. Would this be the best route over the Rockies for the trailer?