MC Raven Trip Report 16 – Stewart to Icefields Parkway

I packed up my stuff – tent and sleeping bag wet thru and thru, and said a soggy “Goodbye” to Stewart, B.C.

Back at the Mezidian Junction I stopped for breakfast at what looks like a café but is really a dining hall for crews working in the area. You enter thru the back into a mud-room where you’re asked to remove your shoes before going thru the line and ordering you food! I’m really glad I changed my socks before leaving Stewart. Huge breakfast made even bigger by cook's mistakenly giving me an extra portion of home fries.

After eating (and putting my boots back on), I was just about to pull out of the parking lot when up rode a man on another BMW – an RT rather than a GS like mine. This was how I met Ricardo. We spent 2-days crossing B.C. and riding the Icefields Parkway.

Ricardo at the Kitwanga Junction

 

I’d heard of the Icefields Parkway before and wanted to ride it on my northbound leg back in early June but, by the time I asked directions, I was already well past the turn off. Now, I was ready to try again – even if it meant going 100’s of miles out of the way and all the way across B.C. to do it!

Ricardo is a Brazilian who’s moved to New Jersey where he owns a limo service. He was heading home from his ride to Hyder. Visiting Alaska and trying to see bears – heady stuff for a boy from Brazil!

Turns out that the day before, when I passed the bear viewing site as I headed up the Glacier Road, Ricardo was there trying to see bears. He spent 8-hours there and never saw one. As we left the Mezidian Junction parking lot, a black bear crossed the road right in front of us.

Ricardo was heading home to New Jersey via the Icefields so we decided to ride along together.

By now, I’ve lived in the North Country for more than 25-years and, I hate to say it, have begun to take all the magnificent scenery for granted. Not so Ricardo: no mountains like these in New Jersey (or Brazil), no rivers, rocks, trees, caribou, bears, glaciers or wonderful turquoise blue glacier-fed lakes either. For Ricardo, it was all magic! He took so many pictures he ran down the batteries in his GoPro and his cell phone. He’d plug the phone into his bike and ride for a half-hour only to jump off and run the battery out again taking pictures and videos.

                                                                  Moose Lake 

I took a lot of pics too but, for every picture I took, Ricardo probably took 20!

It took us 2 days to get to Jasper. Along the way Ricardo had his first ever A and W hamburger – a teen Sriracha Burger. He was in love – he had 3 more in the next 2 days.

The rain caught up to us along the way and by the time we’d left Prince George we were in the middle of a gullywasher. No visibility and running at 20mph with the emergency flashers on. I’m beginning to hate that rain.

 Caribou just outside Jasper

We got to Jasper late in the day and had to stay at a hotel (all the camping was too far down the Parkway for that night). $189 for rooms on top of the noisy air conditioner units. Jasper is very upscale (kinda like Aspen or Jackson Hole in the US. Way out of my budget – that one night in a noisy room was my hotel/motel budget for 2-months!

 View from Jasper

 Medicine Lake along the road to Maligne Lake

Ricardo and I met up for breakfast then rode up to Maligne Lake. Maligne Lake is a glacial lake set amidst jagged mountains. We rode the little tour boats out to an island called Spirit Island – very beautiful place: I left a little of Chrissy there.

 Views from Spirit Island of Maligne Lake and surrounding mountains

After Maligne Lake we headed down the Parkway. It’s just as spectacular as I’d heard! Glaciers, forests, rivers, lakes, mountains – all in this geologic masterpiece of folded rock and ice. To really get the most out of it, a rider needs to ride North to South then, turn around and ride South to North to see everything from a different angle.

Columbia Ice Field 

 Ricardo at Athabaskan Glacier

Although he was carrying camping gear with him, I don’t think Ricardo camped during his ride to Hyder. So, when we reached the lodge at the halfway point and he wanted to check in for the night (another $180/night hotel). I begged off and continued down the Parkway to the nearest campground.

During the night a major thunderstorm rolled thru soaking my just-dried tent again and starting fires on the west side of the mountain. Fires and rain would become the theme for my trip for the next 2-weeks.