8-20-09: The day started out fairly normal and we left camp in Jasper. Our van had just turned out onto the main road and we were crossing over the Miette River when the welding of the hitch holding our bike rack/bikes broke off and it all landed in the middle of the road! (fyi: in Oregon we had an extra piece welded to our hitch to give our rack more ground clearance). We saw this as it happened and stopped immediately. Luckily no one was right behind us and we were able to recover the rack/bikes (the bikes were still attached to the rack) and move it to the side of the road. Mike and Patty's bikes withstood most of the damage (2 big dents on our frames and a bent rear wheel on Patty's bike). Mike put the hitch back together and we were glad to leave that episode behind and continue down the Icefields Parkway toward Banff.We stopped to see Athabasca Falls then continued to Columbia Icefield. Mike showed us the route he took to climb Mt. Athabasca (one of several mountains surrounding the Icefield; he climbed it the year after climbing Denali). The Columbia Icefield is the melting point of 3 continent-wide watersheds. On the western side (B.C.), the meltwaters flow into the Columbia River and on to the Pacific Ocean. On the eastern side (Alberta), meltwaters flow into both the N. Saskatchewan River (which empties into Hudson Bay) and then into the Atlantic Ocean and also into the Athabasca-McKenzie sytem, which empties into the Artic Ocean.
We went into the town of Banff for dinner and camped at Two Jacks Campground just outside of town. We saw that Banff Park was constructing several over- and underpasses just for wildlife on the Trans-Canada Hwy (to decrease roadkills since the hwy has heavy traffic in the summer). We also admired the impressive hotel (pictured) that we saw in Banff.
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