When you combine dear friends, family history and exploring, fun things happen. Pictured here is the Athabasca Glacier which is part of the Columbia Icefields. Construction of the Icefields Parkway aka Banff Jasper Highway was started in the 1930s as a means of putting unemployed men to work (similar to the Great Deal projects in the USA like the Blue Ridge Parkway). It was completed 85 years ago in 1940.
The road itself is a marvel, but the star of the show is the glacier. The Athabasca Glacier is unique in that it is accessible easily by hiking along the moraines (or taking a massive tour bus), although this is not a guarantee as the glacier continues to recede and the constant shifts underneath leave the trails eroding into Sunwapta Lake at the toe of the glacier. 30-40 years ago you could drive right up, now it's a 45 minute hike. At some point it might only be possible to access via boat or air, the irony of this is not lost on me!
My Great-Grandfather stopped here in August of 1954 and snapped a photo from the parking lot. Some 70 years later my good friend Mike who has been guiding tours here for the last decade, used this photo to scout the original parking location. From there we hiked along the moraines onto the glacier. As the sun crept over the peaks, the tour busses (and their fumes) left and we found ourselves alone on the glacier appearing as tiny specks to passing cars along the highway across the valley. And that is exactly how I felt, like a tiny insignificant speck walking carefully along what could have been the surface of the moon for all I knew.
This old photo, this trip, this place and my dear friend Mike - I think it's all trying to teach me something about the passage of time. Of all the 'before and afters' I've completed so far, this one hits the hardest. My life, my great grandfather's life, they are just specks of dust compared to the timeline of the glacier. But in the passage of our lives, the landscape has changed dramatically. If it wasn't for that dusty old box of slides, we may have never gone further than the parking lot, maybe seeing tiny specks on the glacier far away. I can assure you I'm glad we had the chance to go further.