Walking on a Glacier!

It was a rainy, grey and miserable morning as we left Jasper, I can promise you now the weather did not stop raining once for the whole day & most certainly got worse on the glacier.

Anywho we headed out to the Athabasca Glacier to do a hike and experience the fantastic weather, our guide for the tour was excellent with his knowledge and provided us with waterproof gear and hiking boots as well as the attachable studs for walking on the glacier.

There are markers as you walk towards the glacier marking how far it has receded, going back to the early 1900's. It is receding at such an alarming rate, it's not a good sign for the future and I'm really glad I was able to see it, as it may disappear altogether one day!

The rain did not let up once on the glacier and with the wind chill it was around -5 once we got up onto the glacier, but it was absolutely worth it, the deep blue colours of the deep ice, the flowing water and deep cracks in the ice, I'll probably never get to do something like this again, it was so surreal! Of course we filled up our water bottles from on the glacier, quite possibly the freshest water I've ever had! I've attached a short video on the glacier as well, I hope you get a feel for what it was like! (It really isn't the best quality but you get the gist of it).

By this point we were all getting cold and despite the wet weather gear, very wet! So we ventured back down and took off our rain gear, most of us had got pretty soaked underneath somehow...and I stupidly left the top zip on my waterproof backpack open, leaving my ipod and wallet to get marinated with the rain and an open bag of skittles! I really need to say a thankyou to Chris, I was a little annoyed that I was so stupid to let myself do this, he was so helpful with cleaning it up and even went as far as buying me some new packets of skittles! Thankyou so much Chris!
Lets just say my ipod is no longer working...

We had lunch back at the glacier tourist shop then set off to the township of Lake Louise, unfortunately the weather made the normally gorgeous drive horrible and visibility was very poor so we were unable to get any photos. We very quickly stopped at Peyto Lake but only a few of us were willing to venture out of the bus to look with the weather and some snow around on the ground, the lake sort of looks like a wolf on the right side!

 After checking into our hotels we went to a local pub for drinks and dinner, then to a bar for a few drinks before calling it a night...with the rain still not easing up!