Cruised along the Coumbia Icefield Parkway today on the way to Banff which is roughly three hours drive from Jasper. This section of road located all within world heritage listed national park is regarded as one of the most picturesc drived in the world. Unfortunately the day we drove down it low cloud cover obsecured most of the view. Saying that I've been very lucky with the weather so far so I won't complain.

I finally got to wear my thermals and cold weather gear that I've been lugging around for three months!!!!!!! Halfway from Jasper to Banff at the start of the Colombia Icefield is the Athabasca glacier. Jumping at the chance to don crampons again and go and walk up another glacier we followed a guide up and down the glacier for over three hours looking at the different features and learning about how the glacier functions. One scary reality is that this glacier (as many others on the planet) is shrinking rapidly. They National Parks service has placed plaques at various points in the area showing where the toe of the glacier sat over the bet part of the last two hundred years. Its quiet sobering to see the glacier's retreat of close to a kilometer from the 1900's to today, this is not to mention the depth of ice that has been lost during the retreat of between 20 and 200m in cross-section. One thing it does demonstrate is that global warming is not necessarily a new human caused phenomena that some of the fringe 'environmentalists' would have us all believe.