IT’S FROZEN IN TIME
BY MARGO PFEIFF >>> JASPER, CANADA — Snowflakes tumbled lazily in the light of the train as it inched toward the Jasper rail station, where half a dozen elk foraged. They come for grain that freight trains spill on the tracks, a steward had told me on the 18-hour train ride northeast from Vancouver. The elk didn’t even raise their heads as I pulled my luggage past them on the way to pick up my rental car. ¶ I cruised the grid of streets in this Alberta, Canada, town of 5,000, happy to see a comforting collection of mountain-style shops and businesses. And there were old-style hotels just as I remembered. The totem poles and cheesy neon signs also had changed little since I visited here as a kid in the late 1960s.
Jasper is within Jasper National Park, Canada’s largest Rocky Mountain national park and part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, just as the town of Banff is within Banff National Park.
During the last two decades I’ve watched Banff undergo extensive commercial development that has affected its mountain-town character, but Jasper has remained in the slow lane.
The restaurants and accommodations are better now, and there is high-quality craft beer, but Jasper still offers an authentic glimpse into the Old World soul of the Canadian Rockies just as the tight-knit local community likes it.
Visitors may think there is no need to visit Jasper once they’ve checked Banff off their Rockies list, but they will miss something special. As a bonus, Jasper is easily reached from Banff by a spectacular 3½-hour drive north along the glacier-lined Icefields Parkway.
I visited in December for the first time in more than 10 years because I think the Rockies look best clad in snow and because of the promise of fewer visitors and diverse winter activities.
Uncrowded slopes
After a scrumptious breakfast wrap and coffee at Coco’s Cafe, I drove 25 minutes to Marmot Basin in JNP for a day of skiing. I schussed down its four mountain faces and threaded through fresh glades on light, powdery Alberta snow.
It was Saturday, yet there were no lines, and I often found myself alone on freshly groomed runs.
“Welcome to Jasper,” my German-born ski guide said with a shrug. “Since it’s a four-hour drive to the nearest airport at Edmonton, we don’t get many drop-in skiers to create crowds.”
When I returned to my hotel, the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, in the afternoon, however, I did encounter a crowd in the spacious lobby, sipping coffee and cocktails and chatting on leather sofas.
JPL, an iconic Canadian railway mountain hotel built in 1922, has a main lodge and mini-village of cedar cabins facing Lac Beauvert, whose glacial waters glimmer in summer and are frozen in winter.
Later that evening an astronomer gave a presentation in an inflatable planetarium dome at the hotel’s golf club. Then our small group headed outside to peer through two telescopes at a sky that sparkled with stars.
Jasper is one of the world’s largest Dark Sky Preserves, 4,247 square miles of untamed wilderness with little light pollution. (The town helps by using hooded, downward-facing street lights.) In fall, seemingly everyone celebrates the Dark Sky Festival (Oct. 12-21 this year) with visiting experts, concerts, photo seminars and excursions.
I soon learned that many Jasperites are night-sky nerds. Almost everyone I met had star apps on their phones, and there was even a live aurora borealis “weather forecast” screen streaming in the JPL lobby.
Before heading to bed, I stopped at the front desk to ask for an Aurora Alert call. Should the aurora borealis — the swooping, multicolored curtains of light across the heavens — appear, the staff would phone to wake me up.
Winter options
Ice fishing, dog-sledding, crosscountry and backcountry skiing, winter wildlife tours, heli-skiing, fat-tire biking — there seemed no end to winter activities.
I signed up for the two-mile Maligne (“mal-een”) Canyon Ice Walk and fastened cleats to my winter boots. Then I walked along the surface of the frozen Maligne River, following the deepest accessible canyon in Jasper National Park. A dramatic narrow gorge rose above me lined with dazzling frozen waterfalls and brilliant ice formations.
Back at the lodge I strolled a waterfront pathway to neighboring Mildred Lake and slipped on ice skates to glide around a Zambonicleared loop. On that warm and sunny day I watched hockey pucks being slammed across outdoor rinks beneath the snowy triangle of Pyramid Mountain.
One morning I joined Jasperborn Paula Beauchamp for a guided snowshoe trek along the frozen shore of Mystery Lake, silence ringing in my ears when we stopped crunching through the snow.
Beauchamp told me she often spotted bighorn sheep and mountain goats. “An elk even gave birth in my backyard in town,” she said. Another local had told me she hoped the town wouldn’t grow so much that bears would give it wide berth.
“We are living in a national park, after all — their terrain,” she said.
I spotted moose on Maligne Lake Road, a bear on the way to Marmot Basin and elk everywhere, even crossing in a main street crosswalk. One grazed outside my cabin door. “Oh, that’s Randy,” a member of the housekeeping staff said.
On my final day I took the opportunity to fulfill a longtime dream: ice climbing. I joined a small group heading off to learn how to scale Tangle Falls, a small but spectacular frozen waterfall on the Icefields Parkway.
I huffed and puffed my way slowly up the ice using my pointed crampons and razor-sharp ice axes, but, to be honest, I had the most fun rapelling back down.
I returned to the lodge exhilarated to have ticked ice climbing off my winter bucket list.
After dark I walked along Lac Beauvert’s shoreline, illuminated by low lights. At a lakeside lookout a staff member served walkers a treat, a nightly JPL ritual.
I sipped hot chocolate, nibbled on s’mores and stared at the sky. Sure enough, a faint green curtain of light shimmered in waves across the horizon, and I felt as though I was in a colorful heaven.