Top Sights on the Icefields Parkway | 2 Days in Jasper National Park

Matt and Emily here. Welcome back to Where's Wiseman. We're on a road trip through the Canadian Rockies and right now we're at Jasper National Park standing on the Athabasca Glacier. It's cold and it's snowing. During our week-long road trip through the Canadian Rockies we'll be exploring Banff and Jasper National Parks. We left our campground in Banff bright and early and headed north along the Icefields Parkway. Our final destination today is a campground just outside Jasper but first we're headed to the Columbia Icefield where we'll be taking a tour out on the Athabasca Glacier. You do need a park pass to drive on the Icefields Parkway and also if you're going to be staying or stopping anywhere within Banff and Jasper National Parks. We purchased our pass before entering the parks so we were able to quickly drive through this checkpoint. The drive from the town of Banff to the town of Jasper is about three and a half hours without stops and Banff to the Columbia Icefield is a little over two hours. This is one of the most beautiful scenic drives we've ever been on no matter the weather. You're surrounded by towering snow-capped mountains, turquoise glacial lakes, and flowing rivers. There are many viewpoints and hikes so give yourself plenty of time to enjoy this area. Bow Lake is one of Banff National Park's most iconic lakes and is breathtaking any time of year. On this trip we're getting the winter experience and when we last visited during late summer we got to enjoy the beautiful turquoise water. Wow this is a lot different with all the snow and we were not expecting fresh snow today and it just started snowing right now. Very lightly. Yeah very lightly but this is amazing. It's chilly makes me wonder uh what the temp's gonna be on the glacier. Yeah we just pulled over and stopped at Bow Lake. Incredible views. It's just gorgeous up here. This is this drive I think is my favorite in like the whole world. In the world yeah. My god it's can't stop looking around. Let's get moving see some more. On to the glacier. During our drive we rode a weather roller coaster with sun, rain, then snow, rain again, and finally sun. You never know what to expect up here but any time of the year the weather does not matter. The drive along the Icefields Parkway from heading north up to Jasper and it's just it's gorgeous it's amazing we're just looking out the window the whole time as much as we can and pulling off where we can just to take in these amazing scenic views it's just wow. The Columbia Icefield is the largest icefield in the Canadian Rockies located on the continental divide along the Alberta and British Columbia border. There are six major glaciers that make up the ice field and the Athabasca Glacier is the most well known and visited. From the Columbia Icefield center you can see five of the glaciers. Although we're taking a tour on this trip there is a hiking trail that takes you to the toe of the Athabasca Glacier and we hiked this during our previous visit. It's just under a mile round trip and there are small markers along the way to signify how far the now receding glacier reached in previous years starting all the way back in 1890. We are here at the Columbia Icefield just waiting to get on our tour of the glacier. So this is about a two and a half hour tour you get on a bus here at the kind of main ice field there's only one building here you can't miss it from the first floor you get on a bus here which takes you farther up closer to the glacier and then from there you're going to get on the special big red vehicles that take you out onto the glacier. I don't really know what they're called. It's a monster. Yeah that's what actually takes you out onto the glacier and then you have some time on the glacier and I think from there they've built a like a glass skywalk somewhere I'm not exactly sure where that's it so we then drive in a regular bus to that skywalk and do that and then they bring you back here to the center so again about two and a half hours to do the tour if you are interested time to go see the glacier. Let's do it. The all-terrain ice explorer moves at a glacial speed about 11 miles an hour but that just allows for more time to take in the view. The camera isn't doing this hill justice it's a whopping 32 percent grade and I think our guide said was one of the if not the steepest unpaved roads in North America. We're on a glacier. We're on a glacier. So this is the only way you can actually get up on the glacier is to do one of these tours you can walk up only to a certain point and it's nowhere close to really the end of the glacier. Our guide said that these machines I don't know exactly what they're called that shuttle people up here onto the glacier there's only 23 of them in the world and there's 21 of them here at the Columbia Ice Field and the other two are like in Antarctica or something so pretty cool to be able to ride on one of those and come up and be on a glacier. Pure fresh glacier water huh? All right well cheers. Tastes like snow and rocks but it's good. I'll take it. Freshest water we've ever had. The glass-floored Columbia Ice Field Skywalk extends over 100 feet from the cliff's edge and is suspended 918 feet in the air above the Sunwapta Valley and the surrounding ice-capped peaks. Construction began in 2012 and was completed in 2014. You do need to book a tour to visit the Skywalk as the access is closed to all other vehicles except tour buses. The views up here are incredible and they're actually 360 views if you count down. Definitely recommend you do this if you get the chance to come do the At The Basket Glacier Tour and the Skywalk. Yeah it's moving a little bit. Yeah the clear floor is pretty pretty sketched but the fact that this thing is bouncing up and down just ever so slightly oh it's pretty cool though. All right we're on our way out. We highly recommend this Columbia Ice Field Tour and the Skywalk. Totally worth it. It was about two and a half hours long. Yeah we're heading back to the Jeep of Teardrop and on our way to Jasper. A couple stops along the way. Let's get rolling. You guys told everybody calm down. Beautiful. All right let's go see some goats. We have blue sky. We went from getting snowed on at a glacier to now blue sky. We've stopped at Goats and Glaciers and we're going to walk out to the lookout point. When we were here last we did actually see goats at Goats and Glaciers so fingers crossed we'll get some action today. This is super short from the parking area and just walk up to this lookout here so definitely worth the stop. Well glaciers showed up don't see the goats. This area isn't very large you can see here but make sure you kind of walk the length and peek over the side and look down because the goats typically are just right along the bank here so they'll be pretty close if they're here. There was a bunch of them last time and I think this is the Athabasca River. Could be wrong but just stunning views all around. And it's sunny. Yeah what is going on? This will do. This will work. All right first thing we gotta do before we get set up is check out this river. I can hear it when I was uh like 20,000th in line. He's not even exaggerating. To reserve a spot up here I just tried to find one that was in a corner and a loop that wasn't too busy and hey this is pretty dang cool. What's this the Athabasca again? Yeah I don't know if we'll be getting down to it but uh awesome awesome view and vibes. It's that turquoise glacier river water oh it's beautiful. Gosh everything up here the mountains are bigger the rivers are bluer and greener and the lakes the glaciers exist. Anyway let's uh go get set up run into town see what that's all about. Sounds good. Something that's really nice when you stay at the campgrounds in Banff and Jasper both the national parks they provide you with firewood. There's huge wood piles and you just help yourself and in most cases they just have it at the campsite already for you. You do need to make sure you have an axe or a hatchet so you can chop it into smaller pieces. There were a couple fellow campers at our Banff campground that came over to borrow our axe because they didn't have anything to make the firewood smaller so that's a hot tip for you but you don't need to buy firewood. Again if you're staying at these campsites they will provide that for you which is super nice. So for those of you that might be new to the channel or maybe haven't seen this before this is typically how we pack everything we've got it down pretty well we have one bin that we keep most of our camping in we've got a couple of chairs a table this is our propane fire pit if we need that if we don't use it we just tuck it right under the camper here outside the door. All our bedding is usually pre-made our sleeping bags this is just kind of a blanket we put down to protect everything and then take it out once we've unloaded and that's that's it it makes setup and tear down pretty easy. Well it is uh still kind of winter up here it's been cold around 30 degrees at night even though it's may even though it's may almost june yeah so we're kind of having a nice dry out session here the sun is amazing right now we've had four seasons today snow rain sun cool weather and now i mean i could almost be in a t-shirt anyway with that being said our mattress always has some moisture underneath mainly in the winter because of moisture outside in the air and in the camper the heater definitely keeps that down we also keep windows cracked to keep the moisture down and after every weekend trip we'll prop the mattress up just to dry it out it dries out really quick so i had this idea we hate like lifting it and shoving something underneath what if we take one of our 38 bungee cords or three of them and use the roof rack to hold the mattress up in the middle just for an hour or two to dry it out and we're good to go so we'll just leave these under the mattress but this is our new system now we've had this up for 15 minutes it feels like it's already dry we also keep our solar panel under the mattress if we are not going to be needing it it's just one less thing to have to deal with and it's flat and it you know it's out of the way jasper originated as a railway town that just happens to be in the middle of some of the most beautiful protected wilderness in the world as a small town it's very low-key and unpretentious with lots of shops and restaurants and makes a great home base for exploring the national park we just got the fire going well matt just got the fire going settled in and now looks like there's weather coming in feeling a little bit of rain we didn't put the slumber jack up because it has been so beautiful since we've got here well we're just gonna do it we're putting the slumber jack up it could start getting way worse before it gets better but as it always happens as soon as this thing we put the last stake in it's gonna clear up and it's gonna be beautiful so either way it's a win-win i guess turn it into a beautiful day yeah i can't believe it rained on us this morning already yeah never a dull moment with the weather up here good morning today is our final day jasper national park and uh we took our time this morning we slept in a little bit woke up to some rain we were waiting for the sun to come out yeah we've been on the run all week and just needed uh a little more rest it was nice sun came out enjoyed a hot cup of coffee timmies some tim hortons it wasn't bad actually yeah now we are making our way to athabasca falls following the trail here really easy hike it's paved super accessible gorgeous put this on your list if you're in the park you definitely want to see this definitely and we'll flip you around here in a second and show you the falls time for a hike we are on the or we're hiking to the valley of the five lakes or it's the valley of the five lakes trail we're doing the short loop how far is that one 4.5 kilos kilometers and uh it's about three miles around trip i believe one to two hours i think we'll be about right in the middle of that but uh hoping to see some more amazing beauty here south of jasper and no bears because we did not bring our bear spray but we did bring lots of meat snacks oh yeah i have a backpack full of meat and cheese so that was probably dumb there's a lot of people out here there's a ton of people on the trail yeah so they can eat them first maybe and i brought my pocket knife so we're good oh we've got our whistle and and our whistle the jasper sky tram is a seven minute ride up into the alpine tundra of whistler's mountain there are a few different viewpoints of the incredible valleys below from along the boardwalk at the top and you can even hike the less than two miles round trip to the summit this is pretty cool crazy we are in the alpine yeah it's chilly but it's not as cold as i was expecting it to be so it's not too bad we can see where we hiked earlier today valley of the five lakes and we can see our campground and we're gonna try to get a shot of the camper here it is the end of our final day here in jasper national park we start the road trip home tomorrow but don't worry there will be more videos coming from that part of the road trip we did want to take a minute just to say we're considering doing a video all about planning a road trip like this tips and tricks just things to know about the national parks crossing the border all of all of that so if you have any questions for us leave them in the comments below or send us a message on instagram that'll be really helpful when we're putting that video together if that is even of interest also we're uh thinking about putting together some hats we have a couple prototypes here we're still trying them out we just want to make sure we find the highest quality hat and we're also still working on the design so if that's something you're interested in uh leave a hat emoji in the comments that help us out yeah hey bud how you doing yeah you so jazzed for hiking right now or what's going on i'm just trying to keep it weird you are succeeding you trip i will laugh so hard we hope you enjoyed this leg of our journey through the canadian rockies make sure to subscribe and join us for our next video where we begin our drive back home to washington with one last night of camping in beautiful british columbia