Ian Rambles
A lesson today. When there are cars parked alongside the road there is probably something interesting to see.

We sailed past just such a collection of stopped vehicles. Me, driving, and Arthur, riding shotgun, caught a quick glimpse of the back end of a black bear feeding on berry bushes by the side of the highway. Fi etc., in the back, missed out.

Fiona's Journal
Thursday July 10th
Sarah and Keith and the dogs set off on what was supposed to be a 3 mile hike up the mountainside to a beautiful waterfall. I persuaded the boys that it would be fun to follow after them on our bicycles and we duly set off about half an hour behind. It was a lovely afternoon, not excessively hot and with a breeze blowing but even so it quickly got pretty hard going on the steep and rocky track. Soon there simply wasn't another gear low enough for our level of unfitness! After less than a mile we abandoned the bikes in a heap beside the road, apart from Arthur who simply turned round and enjoyed the downhill run back to the campsite.

Harry, George and I continued on foot and we trudged on up the track, winding through beautiful mixed deciduous and evergreen woodland for another hour. We kept catching sight of Sarah and Keith and the dogs above us but could not quite catch up with them. I suddenly became aware that I got too far ahead of the boys so that I could no longer hear them and when I shouted there was no reply. I hurried back down the mountain, imagining all sorts of horrors from a bear attack to a fall over a precipice, only to find them happily engaged in some sort of espionage game with sticks for guns. As the three of us recovered the ground that I had just lost Sarah and Keith appeared heading back down the mountain with tired dogs. They had not found the waterfall and were heading home.

We continued upwards for another 30 minutes but the mythical waterfall did not materialise and the sky was looking increasingly dark and threatening so we decided to cut our losses. We sat down to eat our picnic and then, just as the rain started to fall, we set off back down the mountainside, The track became rather slippery in the wet and I had to encourage George along a bit but both boys were pretty stoic considering our disappointment at not reaching our goal. Our bikes were just where we had left them and it was worth the effort of getting them there just for the sheer pleasure of that final downhill run for home!

Friday July 11th
Today we passed Mount Robson (the highest mountain in BC) before we crossed into Alberta, back into the Mountain Time Zone, and entered Jasper National Park. This is bear country and also contains some of the most dramatic mountain scenery the Rockies have to offer so it should be well worth the twenty something dollars a day that it costs to be here. The highway through the park is much heavier with traffic than I was expecting and the bulk of that traffic seems to be RVs! If we weren't one of them we would be being very rude about them, as we are about caravans in Devon.

The mountain scenery is certainly dramatic. The cut off at the tree line is much more sudden than I had imagined so that each mountain appears cloaked in green up to a certain level, then there is just a narrow strip of sparse stunted trees above which it is bare rock and earth and variable cappings of snow.

The highway climbs up above the tree line at some points and at one spot we pulled off the road to admire the view. Looking down over the kerbed edge of the layby there was a stretch of rocky soil with tiny stunted pine trees growing in it just 3 feet below us. They were only 9 to 18 inches tall but you could easily convince yourself they were full size trees and 300 feet below. It occurred to me that you could create a brilliant optical illusion by building a whole miniature world of roads and vehicles and buildings in scale with the tiny trees – I bet it would take people a while to realise they weren't looking at a real world.

We stopped to take the Jasper Tramway up the side of The Whistlers, a range of mountains which (if I remember the tour guide correctly) forms the continental divide from which all water that falls on one side flows West into the Pacific and all water that falls on the other side flows East to the Atlantic The cable car took us most of the way up the mountain and then I walked up the last 500m or so. The air was surprisingly thin and cold and the ground was partially covered in snow and ice. It was like stepping back into instant winter! I was really puffing when I reached the top but so were a lot of younger, fitter looking people and they were blaming the altitude so I felt better! I was half way back down to base camp when I realised I had forgotten to take any pictures from the top and then I was ambushed by a hail of snowballs from Arthur and Harry who were lying in wait behind a rock. Georrge was in the gift shop getting his daily fix of retail therapy.

We found ourselves a pleasant wooded camp site at Wabasso for the night and it is full of warnings and information sheets about bears so we have high hopes of seeing one.

Arthur's Log:
10th
Mum and the boys went for a bike ride that turned into a walk. At that point I turned round and rode back.

11th
At one point there were several cars parked at the side of the road. There was a black bear climbing slowly up the bank. Its fur was a varnished black and its body rippled with muscle. Dad saw it after I pointed it out but didn't have ti9me to pull over but the others were in the back and didn't see it.

We stopped at the Jasper tramway where we took a cable car all the way to the top of Whistlers Mountain. Whistlers is a lone mountain, not part of a string of mountains, so they also use the top floor of the cable car building as an outpost for seeing fires.

I ambushed mum, missing with the first snowball ( we are so high that there is snow and it's cold ) but the second ( as in the picture, flying through the air ) hit her!!

George's Musings
Been ages since I've seen snow.