The whole point of this big image is scale. From bottom to top:
lower right, a portion of the foot of the Athabasca glacier.
lower left extending to right, the pile of rocks is part of the lateral moraine
mid left: the main foot of the Athabasca glacier.
The pale streak extending from it diagonally toward the right is a one-lane road ful of hikers (the dots); at the right end of this trail is a cluster of cars and campers.
Center is a pale greenish lake (green is the natural color of water, the pallor is from rock flour), the glacial lake. This is where the glacier itself extended in the 1950's.
Just above the right side of the lake are some faint grey splotches, the Icefield Centre and its parking lots. Highway 93 is the thin streak across the image at this level. Above it is the flank of Wilcox Peak.

31 August 2002
Kodak Portra 800, 35mm Canon z90w, 28mm
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

OK, so here are the tourist buses up on the Columbia Glacier. We park our car in a big lot, buy tickets, wait 20 minutes. Then a highway coach takes a whole busload of tourists about 2 kilometers across the highway and up the hill to a dusty staging area. Then we pile into these tall snowcoaches, which drive with glacial speed down a 30-degree embankment onto the glacier and then about a mile up the glacier to a giant parking lot plowed into the glacier. On the way a cluster of a half-dozen trourists is pointed out to us, who are taking an expensive and arduous walk across the same glacier, a half-day hike behind a guide who is insurance against falling into crevasses. We pile out of the buses and walk against a stiff, cold wind -- to where? To the edge of the plowed parking lot, which has been shallowly ditched so that the meltwater will run around and not over the lot. There, some tourists dip bottles or hands into the meltwater for the sheer significance of drinking millenium-old water. Everyone mills around for half an hour, taking pictures of each other and wondering why we paid $15 for this, and then we pile back in the buses and reverse the process.

August 31, 2002
same film, same camera.
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

For your historical appetite: foreground is the massive modern snowcoach, on its 5-foot diameter tires; in the rear is an older snowcoach, used from the 1960's until the 1980's: a bus on tracks. Well, as long as the road is level, it won't tip over, and these things aren't going very fast or far, anyway.

Columbia Glacier, Jasper National Park 31 August, 2002
Kodak Portra 800 35mm, Canon z90w, 28mm, auto exposure
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

This is, of course, The Lady Isabelle standing akimbo atop the glacier. Her hands were not amputated recently, they have turtled into her sleeves because it's cold and windy, and she just had them out a minute ago to take the geezer's picture.

31 August 2002
Kodak Portra 800 35mm, Canon z90w, 28mm, fill flash
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

Ok, this is the erstwhile photographer stiffly posing to give the viewing audience a sense of scale. He's posing stiffly because a stiff wind at his back is trying to blow him onto his tummy, and he's trying to look casual about it. He is failing at this, in case you didn't notice.

31 August 2002
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

View to the NE from Athabasca Glacier. The white stuff at the bottom is the glacier, OK? Above right is the shoulder of the lateral moraine and the striated rock is the shoulder of Mount Athabasca. Across the valley is Nigel Peak

31 August 2002
Kodak Portra 800 35mm Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The west side of the Athabasca Glacier, to show the edge of the Columbia Icefield above and the mountain rocks at its flank.

31 August 2002, Jasper National Park, Alberta

Kodak Portra 400NC
Contax 645, 80mm, f11.0 1/700 sec

Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

If we have gone to all the trouble of getting onto the glacier, we might as well take a picture of it melting. The turquoise stuff is running water. The white stuff is ice. The brown stains are dirt. In the background is more glacier exuding glacially off the icefield above at glacial speed. The big brown humps in the background are mountains. Above is the sky, in case you are wanting help with orientation in general.

31 August 2002
same, same.
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

This is a half-meter hole in the Athabasca Glacier. Water plunges into the depths of the glacier; apparently most of the melt runs through rather than over the glacier. The brown band at the bottom is the frame of the snowcoach and a fragment of its 5-foot tire. You could lose a grade-schooler in this hole pretty quickly.

31 August 2002
Kodak Portra 800 35mm Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The pile of dirt dominating the upper right of this image is actually part of the Athabasca Glacier, as you can see by peering under the ledge. The point of this image is that the meltwater is white. This is from all the suspended rock flour in the water. White rock, I suppose limestone. All the rivers in this area are white for this reason.

31 August 2002
Kodak Porta 800 35mm Canon z90w
Copyright © 2002 Daniel L. Johnson

The file names are my file numbers, and are not directly related to image contents. The subject and technical data are contained within each jpeg file itself, as a comment readable by the Gimp or Photoshop, and the comment is provided to the right of each thumbnail image below.

All photographs are copyright © Daniel L. Johnson; all rights reserved. Photos may be copied and disseminated only without charge, and with attribution.

I'm not in the photography business, but if you'd like a print of any, these photos in real life are all 6x4.5 cm color negatives (unless noted otherwise), and we can arrange this through Photos, Inc., of Minneapolis. I send them my negative and you send them your charge card number and address, and in a week or two you'll get a print. email me at drdan AT wwt.net if you wish to pursue this.