Jasper National Park

The Columbia Icefield Centre sits just inside Jasper National Park. It is a visitors center and gift shop building that looks at the Athabasca Glacier. We stopped there, I bought a shirt and we went to the bathroom, and then right to the glacier. Across the parkway from the center is a little road that leads to a parking area where you get out and walk a half mile or so up to the glacier itself.
All the glaciers in the world are receding. The first trip by Captain Cook up the inside passage of Alaska, there was no Glacier Bay, that was the end of the 1700’s. The ice came all the way out to the main channel. Two hundred years later, the bay is more than 90 miles deep. Any visitors center near a glacier will show you the points where the glacier was in years past and where it is now. Soon you won’t be able to see any part of the Columbia Icefield from the center. Don’t think I’m kidding, the Portage Glacier just outside Anchorage Alaska was the number one tourist stop in the state. There is a beautiful visitor’s center there and everything. But you can’t see the glacier anymore. My first trip up, you couldn’t see it from the visitor’s center, you had to take a boat to the far end of the lake to see it. Now you can’t see it at all, unless you fly over it.
But Dave and I met the Athabasca Glacier head on. We should have surpassed the recommended daily allowance of stupid, but some days you binge.
We walked around the bottom of the glacier. Got up on it. Heard the ice creak and thunder. We knew the dangers that could befall a person walking on an icefield. Then Dave produced the two Cuban cigars he had purchased, and said “let’s smoke these and walk to the top”. So, we did.
At the time, I was a pack a day smoker with the occasional cigar thrown in. Dave was a nonsmoker with the occasional cigar thrown in. As we started our climb up the foot of the glacier, it became clear that the smoking and the climbing were not going to work together. We had no cramp-ons, so placing each step was done with care. You ever try to walk on a sheet of ice? Good, now do it on a sheet 400 feet thick, at a 40 degree angle, and full of streams of melt water, in the rain. We could hear water rushing deep within the glacier, and there were crevasses that opened up to 100 foot drops or more. But like I said, we were on a binge.
We kept our eyes on the ice. A misplaced foot could have sent us rocketing down the slope to the tune of several broken bones, or plunging straight into the glacier to become a frozen addition to it. Every so often we would stop and turn around to see how far we had come. The voices of those at the foot got smaller, then vanished. Each time we would get to the top of the rise, we would discover it was just a step and another lay before us. I had given up trying to smoke my cigar, but Dave was still at his.