An expedition to the Rocky Mountains in Canada has to be on every traveller’s bucket list. Shirin Mehta takes a road trip through the western province of Alberta and revels in vistas for the soul, natural hot springs for the body and adventure to boot.
This is breathtaking — literally! I hear myself gasp as the vista of snow-covered mountaintops, white-laden crags and ghostly evergreens unravels below. A large hand has surely reached down and sculpted rugged peaks, gentle hollows, undulating slopes and sheer drops. We are now seemingly compressed between two stark sides of rock, following the gentle flow of the Bow River. The forests are thick, the plains green and the houses minuscule. Is this the highest point of my trip to Alberta, Canada? I wonder. Can it possibly get any better? My first dose of the Rocky Mountains has been agreeably awesome!
The helicopter ride with the Rockies Heli Tours team has been a mere stopover at Stoney Nakoda Resort and Casino, on the road from the city of Calgary to Banff in the mountains. To warm goodbyes, we leave the strip, not much more than a field behind the resort, and continue on our way, in our private coach, to Banff National Park, a unique preserved and protected World Heritage site that virtually offers visitors the same sights that greeted explorers who came to the Rockies over 100 years ago. Established in 1885 as Canada’s first national park, it offers high alpine meadows, jade green lakes, unusual gorges, canyons and rock formations and a tranquillity that is arguably unmatched. We get a dose of this already, as we stop en route at Vermillion Lakes and Bow Falls for photo ops. You may come here for heart-wrenching vistas as also for the wildlife, hoping to catch a glimpse of big horn sheep, elk, moose and mountain goat. And then there’s the hiking, climbing, horseback riding and canoeing; and in the winter, snowshoeing, ice skating, skiing, snowboarding and dog sledding.
COLD MOUNTAIN
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