In 1991, we decided to spend the Remembrance Day long weekend visiting Jim and Abbie in Banff. On Monday, November 11th, we needed to drive back to McBride to be ready for work on Tuesday. It was lightly snowing in Banff when we headed out, but the snowfall got progressively worse as we traveled north up the Icefields Parkway. By the time we got to the Columbia Icefield, the driving conditions were horrendous and very slippery, with the highway covered with snow, on top of ice.
When we got to the very steep grade at Nigel Creek, we were confronted with three cars sitting sideways on the highway, because they couldn’t climb the hill. I had to get out and help manually pushing them so they could get turned around to head back down slope. Continuing with our drive, as we got closer to the Athabaska Glacier, we were facing whiteout conditions. We proceeded very slowly and once passed the Glacier and headed downslope, the snow let up somewhat, which made the visibility much better.
We began to notice that there was no longer any traffic on the highway, and we concluded that Parks Canada must had closed the highway. We were the last car to get through. Once we got to the Jasper townsite, we made a much needed stop in order to wind down after the white-knuckle drive. We went to L & W and ordered a pizza, sat down and relaxed, before heading west to McBride. On our home stretch home, we faced not snow, but a torrents of rain.
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