Dateline: Jasper, Alberta. There are things to do in Jasper, but mostly I just like being here. Today we did some touring, looking at Jasper townsite and Jasper Lake Lodge, now run by Fairmont. The former is charming and the latter is quite pretty in a low-rise, high-class log cabin sort of way, not unlike a greatly enlarged version of Jenny Lake Lodge. All three of the signature hotels of this chain of parks are now Fairmont operations: Banff Springs Hotel, Chateau Lake Louise, and Jasper Lake Lodge. These three properties are quite different, in feeling and appearance. In spite of that, I have no complaints about how Fairmont is keeping up the properties, all of which are seriously historic.
Now it’s time for a geology lesson. The other DrC was reading in her reference books about the Canadian Rockies and learned why these mountains seem taller while actually shorter than the U.S. Rockies. Mountains’ subjective height comes from the difference between the valley floor and the mountain tops. What makes Canadian mountains seem taller is that the valley floors are lower.
There are two factors that contribute to the difference. First, the Canadian Rockies are made of softer sedimentary rocks while the U.S. Rockies are made of harder igneous rocks. Second, the valleys here were carved by glaciers and hence carved deeper. They are lower because the rock from which they are carved is softer and because glaciers did the carving.
A V-shaped valley was carved by water, a U-shaped valley was carved by glaciers. Look at a map of British Columbia and you’ll see substantial areas marked as glaciers and icefields. BTW, the difference between a glacier and an icefield is whether the ice is moving: a glacier is moving, an icefield is not. Geology lesson ends.
Dateline: Banff, Alberta. We are on our way home to Wyoming, our two weeks in the Canadian Rockies come to an end tomorrow. I wish this place wasn’t so far away, it sure is wonderful to look at and spend time in. The trip south from Jasper wasn’t particularly arduous, you climb a couple of grades and descend a couple of grades. There was some construction but no torn-up roads to drive, just flaggers to heed. We had good weather but the skies were hazy, or maybe smoky. We saw a sign warning us of “prescribed burns” but never actually saw one burning – that could have been the source of the smoke.
In the guided historical walk we took in Jasper last night we were told that the two parks – Banff and Jasper – take in enough money to support the entire Parks Canada operation nationwide. Banff sure enough gets a lot of tourists, and Jasper is busier than it once was. We also learned that much of Jasper’s history is a struggle between the railroad bosses and the Park Superintendents for control of the townsite.
We learned that one has to prove a need to reside there to either buy or rent in Jasper, “a need to reside there” can be a part-time or full-time job or even a volunteer position. People buy houses but not the land they sit on; the land they lease from Parks Canada for truly nominal amounts like $1/year. The Superintendent’s Office controls land use, like renovation, remodeling, or home replacement.
For those of you who haven’t visited a Canadian national park, services there are quite different than those in the States. In the States all the hotels and cafes IN a park are likely provided by one concessionaire, all of the gas stations by another. This is not the case in Canada, where the townsites will have multiple stores, restaurants, gas stations, hotels, art galleries, candy shops, clothiers, even movie theaters in some cases.
In short, the townsites are regular small towns with all the variety that would entail. There are residential districts, bed-and-breakfast places, etc. What these small towns don’t get to do is grow beyond a fixed footprint, so over time they become more dense as cottages are replaced by apartment houses and motels are replaced by hotels. I remember that New Zealand’s national parks are like Canada’s in this respect, and I believe those of the U.K. follow the model too.
