After a few days in Canmore, and an overnight stop in Banff I travelled up the Icefields Parkway to Jasper. This is probably one of the most spectacular stretches of road in the world, so I took a tour bus up so I'd be able to stop along the way, and it also included a trip on specially designed snow coaches onto the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefields. It was kind of neat, if a little brief, but there's certainly a great view from up there and given my track record with ice it's nice to travel on the ice without much risk of falling on your butt.
Jasper was another place I'd never had much chance to go hiking in the summer, and it was really interesting to see the difference in places where I'd been snowshoeing or cross country skiing a few months before. After a few days hiking up and down hills and mountains, around lakes and alongside rivers my legs were in need of a bit of a break so on my last day I took the boat ride on Maligne Lake to Spirit Island again. It was something I'd already done on my first visit here a few years ago but that one spot is ridiculously picturesque and really epitomizes everything about the Rockies so I think it's always worth a visit. Was also rewarded with a sighting of a black bear mother and 2 cubs on the way back, only the second time I'd seen bears in my whole time over here. Although given the amount of time I've spent hiking alone I'm not exactly complaining.
After Jasper it was on to Kamloops, where I was really excited to attend the Kamloopa Pow-wow. A Pow-wow Native American gathering which revolves mainly around dancing competitions. Kamloops has a specially built arena for the annual event, which lasts for 3 days and attracts participants from tribes all over the plains regions of Canada and the USA. Each days' events are kicked off with the Grand Entry, a pretty impressive spectacle where all the dancers, in really elaborate, brightly coloured costumes enter and circle the arena.
After that, there's generally a series of dance competitions in different styles, traditional dances such as the grass or chicken dance (not the one you're probably thinking of), jingle dress and shawl dances for the women, and fancy dances (they're really called that, and the performers are referred to as fancy dancers which I think is great). In between each competition there are also intertribals, where anybody who feels like it can get out on the field and dance, and specials, which are usually sponsored by a particular tribe or family in honour of a particular person. I was only there for one day and it was a fantastic experience, and something I've always wanted to see so I was very glad to have made it to that.
After another day chilling out and seeing a bit more of Kamloops (and luxuriating in my own hotel room for a change) it was back to Vancouver again, bringing me completely full circle from where I'd started in Canada. I'm very fond of the place, it's absolutely beautiful when the weather's as perfect as it was when I was there. I revisited some of my favourite spots, wandering along English Bay, watching the raccoons in Stanley Park and sampling the donuts from the Maple Leaf Bakery (probably the best donuts I know of anywhere in the world) and also caught up with fellow Aussie Mike from my Newfoundland road trip. We did a day trip to Bowen Island on the Western outskirts of Vancouver and hiked to the top of the island. I'm not sure why but this was one of the most physically and emotionally draining things I've done in my whole time over here (although it's probably because we got slightly lost and took the most strenuous route to the top and so used up all our water too quickly). We went through all of the mental states of hiking - from initial enthusiasm to grim determination, fatigue, exhaustion, desperation, anguish and finally degenerating into complete hysteria. We survived obviously, but only just, if we hadn't been able to fill up on soda and ice cream while waiting for the ferry I don't know if we would have lasted the 20 minute trip back to the mainland. It left me with deep mental scars for some time - we'd planned to tackle the Grouse Grind the next day, which involves over 1000 stairs, so when the third person we were meeting cancelled we almost wept with relief that we wouldn't have to go through with it.
Traumatic hiking experiences over with, it was time to hop on another plane (a refreshingly pleasant flight where they were even offering second helpings of cheesecake) to head back to Whitehorse, in the Yukon. Whitehorse is another of my favourite places in Canada, on the one hand there's the sense of the Gold Rush days you get standing by the SS Klondike sternwheeler on the banks of the Yukon River, while on the other they have a Pizza Hut, 2 Tim Hortons and you can get Tim Tams in the supermarket. Add the Northern Lights to that and if it didn't get so damn cold there in the winter it would be pretty close to perfect. My French friend Vianney is living there now so it was good to be met by familiar face at the airport. I spent most of my few days in Whitehorse frowning intently at my computer trying to figure out exactly how to tackle Alaska, which is not an easy place to get around on your own, but did find time to tag along with Vianney on a hike along the summit of Grey Mountain just outside town (it was a pleasant change to be with someone who had a car and could drive to the top of the mountain instead of having to get there the old fashioned way). The landscape of the Yukon is quite different to the rockies, while there's still some impressive mountains they're much more gentle and rounded and the overwhelming impression is of vast untouched space stretching out all around you. Which it is, really - the human population of the Yukon is about 30,000, 20,000 of them living around Whitehorse, compared to a population of about 70,000 moose.
And then it was off to Alaska again, to see what it's like with a bit less snow around, and that's a story which really deserves a separate entry.
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