Lake Patricia and Pyramid Lake

July 27 , 2008

We started the morning by driving down to Beckers Chalets right on the Athabasca River south of Jasper for a nice breakfast. Hwy 93, the Icefields Parkway, runs right along the river here, so we traveled this way several times.

I loved the rushing milky blue waters of the glacial rivers like the Athabasca River here, and the wildflowers were always a joy.

We drove back through Jasper and up the road toward Lake Patricia. On the way we found this brown bear busily rooting for something on the side of the road. From the coloration, we thought it was a grizzly and told someone that, to their surprise since I gather they don't see grizzlies much. Later, our guide Trish looked at the pictures and said that since she didn't see the grizzly hump or the prominent claws on the front paws, she thought it was just a black bear with brown coloration - apparently there is a wide range of observed colors. There is something you might call a hump in the left picture below - but we weren't going to chase him down and ask him, so we don't know. We just enjoyed seeing the bear.

Lake Patricia

We drove around to the edge of Lake Patricia, which was a shallow, clear lake with Pyramid Mountain in the background.

We found Lake Patricia to be so peaceful that we just sat on a rock by the side of the lake for a while. It was our place of worship on this Sunday morning - it is easy to pray in a beautiful and tranquil place like that.

We had scheduled a tour with a rail trip to the Mt. Robson area just after noon, so we had to stay in the Jasper area. We decided to go north of Jasper to Patricia Lake and Pyramid Lake , a short trip which would get us back for the tour. The view at left is a picture of Pyramid Lake on the left and Lake Patricia just above Jasper. We took this picture from Whistlers Mountain two days ago.

Another view of these two beautiful blue lakes from Whistlers summit.

Pyramid Lake

We then drove on around to Pyramid Lake. Pyramid Mountain stands high on the far side of it and there is a wooded island in it.

It has a sizable resort on it but when we drove on past that we found it also to be peaceful and beautiful, even with the darkening of the clouds above us.

We looked for the angle at which this mountain looked like a pyramid to the person who named it. At some angles the color may be similar to an Eqyptian pyramid. The view at left above is from near the island in the lake, and the one at right is from the highest point we reached on Whistlers Mountain on July 25.

I always enjoy watching the ducks and other waterfowl, particularly if they come in families. We heard the call of a loon, but didn't see one here. There was beaver evidence all around.