Monster Bus Tours

Traveling the magnificent Icefields Parkway in the Canadian Rockies one of the prime attractions is the opportunity to actually ride a bus across a glacier.  Now I've ridden a lot of buses in my day through such weird places as Jersey City and Hoboken, but even in the occasional winter storm none of them ever took me across a glacier.

Needless to say, these are not your ordinary bus.  They are sort of a cross between a bus and a monster truck with eight-wheel drive.

Here's a picture:

A number of these vehicles - known as Brewster Ice Explorers- were built in Canada for use on glacier tours but one is actually in service in Antarctica.

Here's a close-up of one of the tires:

Talk about a wide tread...

The tour actually takes you out onto a portion of Canada's Columbia Icefield known as the Athabasca glacier.  It starts with a ride down a thirty-degree slope over a glacial moraine (basically a huge pile of gravel created by the glacier's motion)  which is a little scary even when one is informed that the vehicle has four forward gears: low, lower, even lower and lowest.  Nevertheless, one is deposited safely in the middle of the glacier for a short romp around the ice.

Michelle - romping on the ice

As you can see from this panorama of our view from where we stood on the glacier, it's just a magnificent spot set amid ice fields and mountains and I would recommend a trip up the Icefields Parkway and a stop at the Athabasca glacier to anyone.