Jasper National Park Travel Forum

Hello, my wife and I are from New Orleans. We are considering a car trip from Prince Rupert to Jasper National Park. We would be traveling the last two weeks of September 2009. We are seeking advice on doing this trip. What are the road conditions and availability of gas, etc. at that time? Can you recommend any literature that might be helpful? Can you recommend any one else we might contact for information? We would be traveling back to Seattle after visiting the park.
Thanks for your time,
Warren & Eva Kelley

Hi Warren & Eva,

The route you would take to make this trip would be the #16 (Yellow Head) highway from Prince Rupert to Prince George, Tete Jaune Cache, and Jasper. This is a major, well-travelled highway. There are many good-sized communities along this route and gas availability will not be a problem. The time of year that you are proposing for your trip is late fall for this area. There is a small possibility of snow at higher elevations, but it is unlikely that snow would be an issue on the roads at this time of year. You will encounter cooler temperatures, particularly in the evenings, so you will want to be sure to have a warm jacket or vest for this trip.

On your return trip, I would recommend that you make your way south from Jasper to Lake Louise via the Icefields Parkway and spend a couple of days exploring Banff and Lake Louise. From here you have several options for your trip to Seattle. One route that is particularly scenic would be to drive west on the #1 (Trans Canada) highway to Revelstoke and take #23 highway south to Nakusp and on to Vernon, through the beautiful Kootenay area. This trip would involve a free ferry ride to Galena Bay, as well as at Fauquier. The #6 highway would take you to Vernon and the BC Okanagan area. From here you could proceed into the US via Osoyoos, then continue to Wenatchee and then west to Seattle.

An optional route which would miss the arid Okanagan area would be to continue south at Nakusp to New Denver and ultimately Castlegar via highway #6 south. You could cross the border at Rossland, BC and follow Lake Roosevelt from Kettle Falls, WA to Davenport, just west of Spokane. Then take the #2 highway west to Wenatchee and then continue to Seattle. If dams are an interest to you, you might want to detour 20 miles north off the #2 highway at Wilbur to visit the Grand Coulee Dam, one of the largest dams in North America.

If I had my druthers, I'd choose the second route over the first. My reasons for this are quite simply that the arid climate and scenery of the Okanagan area really doesn't thrill me all that much. But this may be a more interesting route for you, depending on your interests.

You can get free road maps and travel information from the BC and Alberta tourism websites. I have links to those websites in the albums on my home page. If you google Washington tourism I'm sure you can obtain the same information from this state as well.

If you have more specific questions after looking through the tourist literature, be sure to post them here so others can help out.

Hi Camping Girl,
I hope this reaches you. Today is the first time I have even seen this site. It is a little confusing on how to reply to a repl. Any way we are enormously grateful for your prompt and detailed response. I will take my time in digesting it. I did want to promptly let you know how grateful we are. This is exactly what we were looking to find out. We are flying in to Seattle then traveling by car to Vancouver Island. We will be staying on the island and then going to Great Bear Nature Tours www.greatbeartours.com. Next thanks to your response we will be taking the ferry to Prince Rupert, then on to Jasper National Park, and then Seattle.
We cannot begin to thank you enough for your response.
Warren & Eva Kelley

In September, the ferry from the Island to Prince Rupert is available every other day, on odd-numbered days. During September it is still a day trip, leaving at 7:30am and arriving in PR at 10:30 pm. Beginning in October, it switches and only travels at night during the winter months. Being able to make this trip during the day is a real plus, IMO. Here is a link to the BC ferries schedule:

http://www.bcferries.com/schedules/inside/ip-current.html

You are required to reserve in advance for this ferry, so I would do that as soon as you can. If you start your vacation on the 23rd, and plan to spend 3 days on the Island, then you would want the Sept 27th sailing for the Rupert ferry. This is going to be the one "hard deadline" in your trip. After that, you can be more flexible.

From the BC Ferries link above you will also be able to check out the inland ferry schedules for the return portion of your trip, as we discussed previously. Note that all inland BC ferries are free.

The Rupert ferry date will leave you with 6 days to use for the balance of your trip. The drive from Rupert to Jasper is a full day (about 11 hours). So you will have another 5 days to do the rest of your trip. This isn't a pile of time, to be honest. Is there any way you could extend your holiday by 2 or 3 days? Have you visited Banff National Park before? My suggestion would be to spend 2 nights in Jasper and then head south on the Icefields Parkway to Lake Louise. The Icefields Pkwy could easily take a full day if you want to stop and see everything. At a minimum, it will take you 4 hours to drive it. I would strongly urge you to at a minimum stop at the Columbia Icefields en route to LL.

In the LL area, I would urge you to try and see Moraine Lake. I say "try" because the Moraine Lake road closes in early October each year, so you may not be able to get to Moraine Lake. If you can't, continue up to Lake Louise lake and get some pictures of the lake, chateau and Victoria Glacier. Depending on what time of day you finish the Icefields Pkwy drive, you may be able to do the drive up to Lake Louise lake that same day. So this puts us at the end of day 4. You can get to Seattle from LL in one long day of driving, but if you had a few more days you could take your time, see a little more of the areas you are visiting and make some stops along the way.

So, before I lay out any more of an itinerary, I'd like to hear from you about the possibiity of adding a few extra days to your allotted time.

- CG

The last two weeks of September is the perfect time to travel through Jasper National Park - you don't have crowds of tourists, and the fall colours should be gorgeous, especially towards the end of September. Although it wouldn't be unusual to see snow, especially at higher elevations, the precipitation in the valleys is not usually frozen in September, it just rains. The middle of September can often still have very summer-like temperatures, although if there is a change in weather it will be rapidly chilly.

CampingGirl gave you some good advice. I would only disagree with the part about detouring around the Okanagan. This is a very scenic area, and is one of Canada's premier wine growing regions (or should I say grape growing!!). The Okanagan Fall Wine festival usually starts at the end of September, so if you are interested in wines, this is the best route for you to take. There are well over 100 wineries between Vernon on the north end to Osoyoos right on the Canada-US border - lots of wine tasting opportunities.

Whatever you choose, have fun!!

Just wanted to add - here are some websites that you may find helpful in planning your trip:


http://www.pc.gc.ca/pn-np/ab/jasper/index_e.asp

http://www.greatcanadianparks.com/alberta/jaspnp/index.htm

http://www.yellowheadit.com/

http://www.owfs.com/

http://www.hellobc.com/TBCCW/Activity/4543994.htm