Chasing the Thaw: Miles of Ice on the Icefields Parkway

[Banff & Jasper – Road trip, Alberta] In April 2025 we drove from Vancouver to Jasper and back — over the Coquihalla, through Rogers Pass, into Banff, and up the Icefields Parkway while it was still winter up there. Lake Louise was frozen solid with a crowd walking across it. Bow Lake was a flat white plain with the lodge sitting on the shore. The Columbia Icefield was silent. And south of Jasper we drove twenty minutes through the forest that burned in July 2024. The first two nights were a chalet in Golden, tucked behind the river with the forest and the peaks at its back, and the last one was out past the east gate with fresh snow on the roof. Five days, one drone, and almost nobody else on the road. This is the whole trip, start to finish — the Coquihalla, Salmon Arm, Craigellachie, Rogers Pass, Golden, Yoho, Lake Louise, Vermilion Lakes, the Banff Gondola up Sulphur Mountain, Bow Lake, Bow Summit, the Weeping Wall, the Big Bend, Parker Ridge, the Athabasca Glacier, Athabasca Falls, the Jasper burn scar, bighorn sheep on Highway 16, and a spring snowstorm the whole way home. CHAPTERS 0:00 Before the thaw 0:13 Day one — Vancouver to Golden 0:50 Rogers Pass 1:16 Golden, BC — the Kicking Horse valley 2:27 Day two — Lake Louise, still frozen 2:57 Vermilion Lakes 3:09 Sulphur Mountain 4:03 Day three — the Icefields Parkway 4:41 Bow Lake 5:32 Bow Summit 5:56 The Big Bend 6:27 The Athabasca Glacier 7:15 Athabasca Falls 7:38 The burn 8:01 Where we stayed 8:48 Day four — bighorn on Highway 16 9:04 Day five — the way home FILMED iPhone, Insta360 and a drone. 18–22 April 2025. MUSIC "Turn In The Sun" and "Way Back Home" by Simon Herody, "From Here on In" and "I'm Giving Up" by Everet Almond — YouTube Audio Library. One trip at a time, from first light to last.