Mountain Do

It's a 114-mile trip from Lake Louise to Calgary, where I need to be tonight for an early-morning flight the next day. The big question: Should I add a visit to the Columbia Icefield, 80 miles away and in the opposite direction from Calgary?

I really don't even know what an ice field is, but I head there anyway, making stops along the way. One of those stops -- Num-Ti-Jah Lodge -- turns out to be inspired.

The log lodge along the Caribbean-colored Bow Lake was built by Jimmy Simpson, who left England in 1896 as a teen and set out for the Canadian Rockies. He became a famous guide, and in the early 1900s began building the lodge, using some logs that were 75 feet long.

An Indian tribe nicknamed Simpson "Wolverine Go Quick." I mention that merely as an example of the kind of history and romance you can still feel when entering the lodge, which has three massive stone fireplaces, a restaurant with fine food, a tea room, a billiards room and large but simple rooms with no TVs or phones.

After a lunch of herb-crusted salmon, I walk around the lake and chat with a park service worker who hands me a sticker reading, "Save a Bear/Drive with Care/Don't Stop to Stare." He tells me an ice field is more or less a glacier, only bigger, and recommends that I hire a guide to hike it, rather than riding a bus-like contraption.

Turns out that unless you're lucky, you have to reserve a guide in advance, so instead I board a vehicle that would be a little boy's dream: a big lumbering thing developed for arctic exploration. After about 15 minutes, it drops me at an area bounded by orange cones and tape, lest visitors wander off and fall into a deep crevasse.

I've always wanted to walk on a glacier, but in a way it's disappointing. Glaciers and ice fields are amazing things. For example, I learn that it takes 80 feet of compacted snow to create one foot of glacial ice. But standing atop a glacier or ice field doesn't really seem any different than standing on a foot of snow, unless you use your imagination and get excited that the ice is hundreds of feet deep and miles long and always moving, imperceptibly.

Then again, I'm able to fill my water bottle with pure glacial melt and glimpse some awesome crevasses.

The ice field lies within both Banff and Jasper national parks, and for a moment I'm tempted to venture a bit farther into Jasper than I've already come. But I already have more than 200 miles to go before I sleep. I'm confident I can go to bed feeling that while I might have missed something, I've sampled at least some of the best.