Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Despite all of the rain and snow yesterday, today started cloudy but was suppose to start clearing up by mid-morning. So after breakfast from the cafe in front of our hotel (yogurt with fruit and nut toppings, pancakes, salmon BLT sandwich, and an apple cinnamon muffin) we headed out for the Jasper Skytram on Whistler’s Mountain. 

The drive up to the base was pretty sad. The road was covered in leaves and the sides were lined with broken trees; yesterday’s storm was very hard on the vegetation in this area.

Once we made it to the base station, we had a short wait until it was our turn to ride. We boarded the gondola with 17 of our closest friends and began our ride up the cable. Ellie was a bit nervous at first but she relaxed as we progressed up; Mackenzie white-knuckled the entire 7 minute ride.

At the top they had a small gift shop, a restaurant upstairs, and a boardwalk around the building. Because of the snow yesterday, they were still clearing the boardwalk and even had a section blocked off due to the drifts over hanging to roof and ice cycles on the eaves. Therefore, we did not get to enjoy the full panorama of the area, but the clouds were lifting and  what we did get enjoy was beautiful. 

We gave the girls our phones to take pictures and they seemed to enjoy the trip back down.

Back at the bottom, we loaded in the car and started heading back down the hill on our way to Maligne Canyon (which we just learned is pronounced ma-leen, rhymes with clean). A few curves out of the parking lot and I remember that we wanted to try for a cache back there. So, Carson made a u-turn and we headed back up. Just inside the parking lot entrance was a large bolder behind some trees. Supposedly there was a cache in one of these trees. We couldn’t find it. So, we left and started back down the hill again. This time, we made it all the way to the bottom and were able to continue on our original trajectory. 

The road to Maligne Canyon was pretty clear but every road off of the main route was closed due to downed trees. Once at the main lodge, the parking lot was an absolute mess. As with all snow covered lots, people were parking with way too much space between the cars resulting in the popular locale filling up faster than normal. So, we had to make our own space along a curb. Thankfully, we were all wearing our hiking boots so we all had dry socks despite the sloshy lot and trails.

I wrote the rest of this post before the canyon part, and now I feel like it’s too long. So Carson’s going to cover that in a separate post.

After the canyon, we headed back into Jasper for lunch at 1pm. Then, back to the hotel to change into our swimsuits for RAFTING! Yeah, we finally got to go white water rafting! But first, we had to walk twelve minutes down the road from our hotel to meet up with the bus. Again, we were back on a yellow school bus, but this one was half full of wet suits and other gear, and pulling a trailer with three rafts on it. 

As we pulled out of the parking lot, one of our guides explained the gear we were going to put on: we started with socks they provide (these were simply to make it easier to take of the shoes we were going to wear), our wet suits, water shoes/booty things, and because it is still cooler than comfortable they also gave us each a jacket to keep the river water off our arms. We were also informed that we would not need helmets as these were class II rapids and did not warrant such safety measures. After the explanation of everything, another guide started taking sizes and passing out our gear, and we started dressing while the bus kept going.

After a short drive, we pulled into a small parking lot at our put-in point, unloaded, and received a quick safety training on how to get in and out of the raft, how to hold your paddle, and what to do if you or someone else or your guide fell out of the raft. Now time for the fun!

We split into two rafts: the four of us plus our guide in one, and the other four guests (a young couple and a mom & her son) plus their guide in the other raft. Meanwhile, the third guide would be hanging back on shore to take pics as we rafted down the river. In our raft, we started with me and Mackenzie in the from with Ellie behind me and Carson behind Mackenzie, and our guide bringing up the rear.

The other group put-in first. Once they were a couple minutes down stream, we put-in and began our journey. 

The first little bit was pretty smooth; mostly just getting use to the paddle and strokes. From there, we went through a few pretty good rapids; getting some good air time and moderately wet along the way. 

About two thirds of the way through, Ellie wanted to get wet, so Mackenzie and Ellie traded places. We then went through one more pretty long stretch of rapids. Unfortunately for Ellie, our timing and bounces got us in the air pretty good, but not much splashing. 

Back at the bus, we pulled the raft out of the water and drained it. Then, we sat on the trailer and removed all of our gear and got back on board.

All in all, the fun lasted about 45 minutes, and we all had an absolute blast! This was just the right amount of thrill with a bit of breaks in between. We will defiantly have to do this again sometime!