For whatever reason(s), during the flight through Jasper we started calling our destination, the great little town of Valemount, by another name: Voldemort. Maybe we were tired, feeling the effects of altitude, or more likely just feeling playful because we had some trouble remembering the real name. So in looking at the pix for this post, I couldn’t resist using the nickname at least one more time. 🙂
2371 Giant Landscape Art
Along the way we greatly enjoyed scenes like this. I love how the trees contrast with the rock skirt. My brain imagines that it has to do with solid volcanic rock making the skirt shape, and softer adjoining soil allowing trees to grow. But my creative heart thrills to the visual effect. Near the tiny town of Jasper is a tram that goes far up the mountain, where people can enjoy the feeling of being on top. Of course, we were looking down at it and out beyond to higher mountains they couldn’t see marching in jagged rows far into the distance.
2375 Down To Top
There are so many spectacular peaks, valleys and glaciers it’s no surprise we have 421 pix from this one leg of the flight home. Just be glad I’m not going to share them all. 🙂
2392 Alpine Range
Clearly I’m going to share a few like the one above tho, demonstrating the dance between sky and terrain, stone and life, peak and valley, shadow and light.
2396 North Southwest
Many spots look so much like the Southwest, only the miles of glaciers and tall conifers let you tell them apart. Somehow I imagined the rocks would look different due to the climate, and maybe they do up close, but this slice of color and texture looks exactly like something from our pix from flying in Monument Valley or the Grand Canyon. As for the “Matterhorn” of Canada they call Mt. Robson, here are a few more pix from our semi-circumnavigation.
2417 Robson Back
2421 Robson Feet
The dwindling glacier on the “back” side (away from the highway) melts into a lake at the feet where it once carved out a basin from the solid rock. As always of course, you can click any pix here to see larger versions.
Here’s another pic I like of the “powdered wig” atop the opposite side of the peak. It’s fun to look at, but also gives an impression of how severe the weather and avalanches are up there!
2432 Robson Wig
After our closeup look in rare clear weather (and above most of the smoke from distant wildfires), we descended into sweet little Valemount. It was warm and welcoming to our overflowing eyes, and once we saw it the name Valemount lodged permanently in our memories.
2462 Valemount
After tucking Tripp in for the night, we looked around the edges of the deserted airport with expanded eyes. Everything seemed magical, as if we’d been wandering an especially creative art gallery for several hours and now all we saw was art. The alpine flowers seemed both huge as if we were microscopic insects, and tiny as if we were giants.
2464 Scale
We had landed in that place where beauty is all around, among, between and within us because our eyes are open to it.
John & Anne Wiley 
Very nice photos of a wonderful trip 🙂
Comment by ssrijana — 2012/09/17 @ 07:35