At the Athabasca Glacier

After visiting the Athabasca falls we approached the Athabasca glacier and were debating if we would take the hike and go up there. In 2006 we drove by cause of the crowd as I was sure we would return and I hate crowds (I know its single-minded). This time we decided to go up and take a closer look. When you drive to the parking lot you find signs beside the road with years onto it. Its starts at 1890 end end with 1992 and that is quite a long way, 2000 metres at least if I take a look with Google Earth. You can argue the melting is natures way and not because of the so called climate change; industrial revolution was just starting in 1890. Anyways while walking up the pretty steep hill we, again, came across a hurde of Germans. Nothing wrong with that but it seems they are everywhere from Jasper to the glacier. One if them commented "If I were here in 1982 the hike was done by now" with the steepest part still to come, I admit my sudden cultural reading and taking pictures was resting on the steep climb. I was listening to the guide for a while and he was telling the glacier melted down by 500 tons a day and you indeed could hear the water flowing at the end of the glacier, and it is a lot. Probably we all have seen the Artic Ice crumbling down into the sea, here that crumbling happens too as large pieces of ice fall onto the rocks and melts away. The glacier itself is a beautiful piece of ice, deep clear green-blue looking into the cracks, and awesome pruduct of nature itself and its hard to believe that in about 100 years the glacier is gone and is replaced by a lake surrounded by trees.