Cloudmanic Labs

Never turn your back on a mountain.

Note: Earlier this summer, my husband and I found ourselves in an unfamiliar dilemma: we both had a chunk of vacation time we needed to use immediately. The situation called for an epic road trip across the wilds of Washington, Canada and Montana. More background in earlier post: Northwest road trip, part I: Ghosts and vampires

While Olympic National Park is home to the majestically named Olympic mountain range, it didna't prepare us for the peaks of British Columbia. The first attack came just after we left Vancouver. We wound our way north along the famous Sea-to-Sky Highway, admiring views of water and forest, and when we came to a sign for a waterfall at a provincial park (kind of like a state park here), we turned off the road. Our reward was the sight of Shannon Falls’ 1,000-plus-foot foot cascade.

That should have taught us something. But instead, when just down the road we came upon a scenic viewpoint sign with a little mountain graphic on it, we hardly noticed. 

“Stop?” my husband asked, not taking his eyes off the road.

“Nah,” I said from the passenger seat. We hadn’t been driving very long; we’d just stopped at the waterfall; plus, I figured we weren’t going to get a dramatically better view of the distant peaks than what we could see out our car window.

We zipped by the turnoff. A moment later, we went around a corner.

“Oh my God! Wow! Holy—- ! Wow!”

Giant, glacier-covered mountains loomed to the west. They were so big, and so unexpected; it felt like they were nearly on top of us. I grabbed for the camera and got off a few through-the-window shots while my husband tried to keep from driving us off the road.

Honey, therea's a mountain at the window.

And thus we learned our first lesson of Canada: When they tell you there’s something to look at, they really mean it.

From there, the sights only got bigger and more impressive. Any bend could yield a breathtaking vista. We expected that in the national parks, but realized the whole freaking province was stunning. We even started joking each time we neared a provincial park: “Oh, it’s just a provincial park. It’s probably something like Yellowstone, only twice as big with five times as many geysers.”

Just another amazing, giant mountain in Canada.

Of course, once we did reach the national parks and the Rocky Mountains, the alpine attacks only became more frequent. I finally stopped taking photos of mountains. Partly, it was because they were literally everywhere I looked. But also, I knew their grandeur wouldn’t have the same power when I was home, looking at them on a computer screen, instead of staring up at them from an avalanche zone.