BEAR WATCH

I was really excited to hit the Rocky Mountains of Canada. But I was also worried about being solo, mainly because of bears. How would I deal with a bear by myself? Luckily Google had the answer. Ways to deal with bears:

1. Stand tall and speak to the bear in a calm, soothing manner. For real.
2. Do not run! Bears will then see you as prey and chase you down. They can run up to 30mph. You don't stand a chance. Usain Bolt doesn't stand a chance!
3. Don't look a bear in the eye. Ain't nobear got time for that.
4. If one attacks you, play dead.

In spite of my very in-depth preparation for hiking alone, I was extremely lucky on my first day at the HI Banff Alpine Lodge, to bump into Jasmine in the hostel. She mentioned that she had a car and she was thinking of doing some of the hikes I was planning to do. She was also planning on driving up the Icefields Parkway, which was perfect, as I really wanted to see it and had no means of getting there.

So the next day we set off on the drive, final destination the Icefields Parkway Centre.

My Banff buddy, Jasmine.

Anyone following my Instagram story will have seen the not so subtle Anchorman reference to Bear Watch. Completely misleading as the mood is in no way tense when you're driving down the Icefields Parkway and see a load of cars pulled over. You already know what you're going to see and the mood is one of pure unadulterated excitement, the pitch of your voice increasing as the bear, or bears in our case, come into view.

Poor bears can't get no peace!

It takes about 2 hours to drive up to the Icefields Parkway Centre, including the many stops. As you can probably imagine, the Rockies are a photographer's dream, not only for the badly zoomed shots of bears but also for the incredible landscapes. So we made frequent stops, and I was snapping away the whole time.

When we got to the Icefields Parkway Centre we booked onto the visit to the Glacier Skywalk. I found it... underwhelming. The platform itself is a bit of a structural engineering marvel, however, you can't see the Glacier!

You can see lots of the surrounding valley, and there's a little thrill when you step out onto the glass platform, to see the drop hundreds of feet below. But I much preferred what we did after.

The Icefields Parkway Centre sits directly opposite the Athabasca Glacier. You can book a tour to go up onto the glacier in a special vehicle, and have a walk around.

The Athabasca Glacier

Or you can do what we did, which is drive up to the car park near the base of the Glacier and then take the easy hike up for 20 minutes until you reach the base. There's a cordon, and you might not get as close as you would if you did the tour, but hopefully you'll agree that the views were incredible nontheless!

And IMO, this is how nature should be - free to all!