COLUMBIA ICE FIELD

COLUMBIA ICE FIELD

We were up before the chickens today.  I suppose there was an

atmosphere of excitement as we anticipated this adventure.  We stopped on the highway to pay our Park entrance fee. The all day cost for our car was $19 (Canadian dollars).

   Turning off of the main highway, we soon found ourselves in more mountains than I had ever seen.  All along this two lane road the mountains stood one after another, on both sides, for miles. Every mountain was steep sided and picturesque with many water features and cascades from the melting snowfields and clinging glaciers.

   Our first view of the Athabasca Glacier from the Columbia Ice Field interpretive Center was incredible!  This glacier is one of the six "prominent toes" on the footprint called the COLUMBIA

ICE FIELD. This ice field is the headwaters of the huge Columbia River that borders Washington and Oregon. Although this glacier recedes more than 15' each year, it still covers more than 2 square miles and is nearly 1000' thick at its thickest place.

   We opted to buy two tickets ($70 a pair with a AAA discount), for a ride on a monster ice crawler to go out on the glacier for a 30 minute stroll on the ice.  It was as awesome as it sounds!  To walk farther up on the

glacier was not recommended unless one had experience and technical equipment.  Hikers without brains have been known to break through snow bridges and end up stuck in the bottom of a crevasse.  As I wasn't interested in becoming a human Popsicle for a future generation of glacier walkers to discover, I remained on the safer part of the ice field.  Debby and I did have a drink of the melting glacier.  It was delicious. I suspected that this portion of the big Columbia River did not require filtering.

 

Riding the giant Brewster was fun!  This monster truck weighs 25 tons.  It can crawl up a 60 degree hill with its six-wheel drive Diesel engine.  It's 3 feet wide by 5 feet high soft rubber balloon tires does very little damage to the moraine rock or the glacier.

The ride can be a little bumpy at times but we were too busy enjoying the view to think about that.  This ice crawler carries 12 passengers and can bought for only 2 million dollars.