February In BC & Alberta — Fostering Adventure

February In British Columbia & Alberta

February 8, 2022

A Short Winter Trip For a Change In Scenery

Our first night’s camp spot just north of Merritt, B.C. on the old highway.

After a bout of post New Year’s cabin fever we decided to get away from the big city for a change (read improvement) of scenery. We started out with the idea of a more ambitious trip above the 60th Parallel, but as we got into it we realized that we weren’t up for that demanding of a journey.

We had already reached the town of Jasper, Alberta when we determined we needed to alter the itinerary, so we headed east through Hinton for a drive over to the city of Edmonton. We hadn’t been there before, so thought we’d have a gander.

Lac Le Jeune on the way to Kamploops B.C.

At a lookout over Napier Lake on Hwy 5A in the Nicola Valley.

As with all the interior lakes, Napier Lake was completely frozen over.

Despite the cloud cover, we did have some sun peaking through from time to time.

Our second night was spent in Blue River, B.C. on a backroad beside the local substation.

We had no traffic, and peaceful night because of the heavy snowfall.

No, it’s not a wildfire, but rather a slash burning fire on the new oil pipeline that’s being built from the Alberta oilsands to Vancouver on the coast.

Driving north from Blue River we turned east at the junction with Hwy 16 and headed past Mount Robson to Jasper. From there we continued east through Hinton and spent the third night in the town of Edson.

Edson is a decent sized town with a large lumber mill in it. We looked for a spot to camp, and found a spot in a new subdivision that only had a few houses in it. It was open and flat, so easy to find a level spot. The downside to our camp was discovered in the middle of the night. It came by way of gale force winds that were so strong I was afraid it would lift the solar panels. The wind hit us from behind, so there was no protection from the roof rails like there is when traveling down the highway at speed. So to be able to sleep, I crawled out of bed and into the truck cab, and turned the truck around so the wind was hitting the front of the truck. Aside from easing my mind, it now meant that the back of the truck where the bed is was now sheltered from the wind blast. So it made for a much quieter night.

We overshot a turn, so made use of the pipeline access road to get turned around.

The subdivision we stayed in. We're the blue dot in the upper left hand corner.

Dawn on the day following the wind storm.

The ground, which was paved, was covered in a generous layer of rutted ice.

When we pulled in we parked with the front of the truck pointing toward the road we came in on. But this orientation is because of the wind.

I think the builder read the architects drawings wrong and put the two outside walls in the middle. The roof is sloping the wrong way.

A Brief Stop In Edmonton

Heading east to Edmonton we stopped briefly at its biggest attraction… a mall. Specifically, the West Edmonton Mall. We remember back when this mall was first being discussed back in the early 1980s. It was going to be, and still is today, the largest mall in North America, with the largest indoor lake in the world. It also has the largest wave pool, and largest indoor amusement park in the world. For the Edmonton residents, it provides a city wide entertainment centre for the long winters experienced at that latitude. The mall has up to 800 shops, and covers an area of nearly 500,000 square metres.

We spent some time walking around and looking at all the features, and then blew town.

The location of the West Edmonton Mall in greater Edmonton.

An overview of the mall property.

The mall has a number of themes. This one like old Europe.

One can even play golf inside the mall... sort of.

Shops on the main floor, who knows what on the upper levels.

A pirate ship in the indoor lake.

The ship comes complete with dummy sailors.

The lake stretches down the mall and terminates at a pool with live sea lions.

The sea lions swimming about. They have shows at certain times.

The very large indoor wave pool.

A large water slide is part of the pool.

There's also a full size skating and hockey rink.

Turning South

We pulled into a rest stop and came across this giant windmill blade. You don’t realize how big the wind generators are until you see how this blade dwarfs our truck.

After spending a few hours “wandering the mall”, we headed south out of the city towards the other large city in Alberta… Calgary.

The drive to Calgary is 300 kilometres, so at our 90kph maximum speed, it’s a four hour drive. Since it was later in the afternoon, we pulled off for the night in one of the small towns along the highway, and bedded down on a back street. The next morning saw us back on the highway heading toward Calgary. The only excitement during the drive was when we passed a truck weigh station on the side of the highway, and several miles later were pulled over by the Alberta Highway Patrol. The officer informed us that we were in violation of the law because we failed to pull into the weigh station to be processed. All commercial trucks had to pull in. He was a bit surprised when we told him we weren’t a truck at all, but rather were technically a “motorhome”. When we showed him the registration where it states the vehicle is indeed a motorhome, he let us go with a compliment about how cool our vehicle was.

We’ve already been to Calgary a number of times, so we decided to veer off onto a secondary highway heading west. One that would bring us in the back door to Canmore, and Banff National Park. That highway took us alongside the Ghost Lake Reservoir which was completely frozen over courtesy of the constant sub-zero temperatures. We stopped there to take a break, do a little maintenance for the truck, and watched the locals on the ice of the reservoir (Ghost Lake). There were several ice sailboats, and a few ice fishing placements.

Parked beside the Ghost Lake Reservoir.

An ice fishing hut constructed on the lake ice.

The lake is quite large, but is fully frozen over.

Although frozen, the lake looks like it has waves lapping at the shoreline.

Three iceboats sit waiting for their owners to come and use them.

Doing a minor bit of maintenance in the warm winter sunshine.

The nice thing about the back highways is the lack of traffic. Few cars travel these roads, the ones that do are mostly locals.

Checking our winter grille cover while stopped at Tunnel Mountain Camp Ground at Banff.

There are services at the campsites, but in winter all you get is electricity. This doesn't change the price though.

Many of the campsites have a view of the mountains and valley.

A mountain ridge on the opposite side of the valley.

The rays of the setting sun on the local peaks.

After sunset there is always a great deal of colour in the sky if clouds are present.

Looking in the direction of the sun that has gone down below the horizon. The clean, clear air is a nice benefit of the Rocky Mountains.

While stopped at Ghost Lake, which was created by a dam constructed on Ghost River to form a reservoir for this region, we saw this person playing out on the ice with his vehicle. His ice safety technique left a lot to be desired.

After our night at the Tunnel Mountain Campground, we made a push to get back home. We spent a night in Golden, and another in Peachland before getting back to Vancouver.

Camped in a marsh parking lot down the street from the Golden RCMP station.

The marsh has a large network of boardwalks.

Driving over the Rogers Pass, we encountered high snow banks on each side of the highway.

Fortunately all the roads were well ploughed. So we had no problems driving.

Parked in a vacant lot in Peachland, B.C.. There's few places to camp in the Okanagan during winter.

We had a view of the lake from our parking lot.

Now driving through the Hope-Princeton highway route. More snow coming down.

The biggest danger driving this route is the large trucks coming the opposite way. The many extreme curves on the eastern part can be problematic for heavy vehicles in the snow.