T13: Walking on a Glacier

1. There’s a tour that will let you walk on the Athabasca Glacier in the Columbia Icefield, which is about an hour and a half’s drive North of Banff.

2. You take a tour bus from the main building which is built close to the highway. The bus will take you through a restricted area to a shelter. From there you get onto one of these “Ice Explorers”. Notice the the tires are huge. They are as tall as a man’s shoulders.

3. The Ice Explorers are especially built to go out on the glacier. The only ones in existence are the fleet owned by the company that runs the attraction, and one owned my the USA government for exploration of Antarctica.

4. Part of what makes them special is a direct drive gear system that enables the Ice Explorer to go up and down inclines that would break a lesser vehicle. I didn’t take notes, but I think our fast-talking guide said we were on a 60% incline.

5. The ground might look solid, but even before we reached the glacier, we were on an amalgam of ice, rock, and dust.

6. Notice the puddle right where the ice meets the road.

7. Glacial runoff is one of the biggest hazards with a glacier.

8. It creates fissures in the glacier and weakness in the ice. Summer is a particularly hazardous time for it. We arrived in a storm, but still there was a fair amount of water moving along.

9. Apparently the water is considered to have special properties. Several people took bottles straight to a rivulet working it’s way through the parking area on the glacier where we were released to wander around.

10. So what was I doing? Yep, taking pictures of my own feet. Please note that I am not holding my foot over the ice here. I actually have a little weight on it.

11. The glacier we were on was hardly the only one in the field. There were glaciers all around.

12. Although there was a moment of sunshine, as soon as we heard a thunderclap, the tour guides were frantic to get us all off the ice and back into the Ice Explorers. Ice conducts electricity.

13. Although were admonished to stay in the safety of the parking area, other packages allowed people to walk all the way to the upper part of the glacier. Getting a ride in is incredibly convenient, but don’t those guys look intrepid?

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