PORT ANGELES — This was a depressing past couple of weeks for me.
Last week, I was supposed to take a vacation I had been looking forward to all summer to one of my favorite places in the world.
Jasper, Alberta.
As most of you have heard, one-third of the village of Jasper burned down from a rapidly moving wildfire at the end of July. It was shocking to watch the footage. If you’ve never visited Jasper, it’s one of the prettiest idyllic little mountain towns you’ll ever find. It’s like being in Switzerland or Austria. It’s an old rail town surrounded by towering peaks of the northern Canadian Rockies on three sides.
I first visited Jasper when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old and fell in love with it even then. Banff, about two hundred miles to the south, is much more famous and in some ways a little more spectacular, but Jasper is much quieter and low-key with about half the visitors as Banff. Banff feels a bit too much like being in Yosemite or Yellowstone in mid-summer. It’s incredibly crowded and not always relaxing.
I’ve returned to Jasper every few years, climbing some of the peaks around the townsite. Last summer was my first return in close to a decade. The fires were terrible in western Canada in the spring and early summer last year, but by the time I went to Jasper in late summer, those blazes were mostly out or under control. I felt optimistic.
Unfortunately, a whole new series of fires blew up literally on the day I drove up there. Jasper was very smoky most of the time. I had one morning of blue skies and that was it. I tried to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation, but I vowed I would return to Jasper in 2024 to enjoy blue skies and the amazing views. The worst of it was the drive back with two huge blazes south of Kamloops, B.C. I drove through 100 miles of dark orange apocalyptic-looking sky, paranoid that the highway was going to be closed at any minute, before breaking out of the smoke south of Merritt. Next year, I will have better luck, I said to myself.
Sadly, that didn’t come to pass.
I had been planning to hike the whole of the Maligne Canyon and to take a hike up to the Bald Hills, a hike I had to cancel last year due to the smoke. Everything was looking good until the end of July when a fire blew up just a couple of miles from the town and then roared through the village’s downtown area. It just didn’t seem possible that something like that could happen.
Fortunately, no one was killed and Canada has vowed to rebuild the town.
From a purely selfish point of view, I was also fortunate to get my nonrefundable room refunded. In October, I plan to take a four-day weekend in Whistler, B.C., when the rates are incredible cheap, to make up for the loss of my vacation. There’s not a lot to do in Whistler in October, which is why it’s so cheap, but as long as I have a hiking trail in the mornings and afternoons and a brewpub in the evenings, I’m happy. I don’t need more than that.
I hope to return to Jasper in three years. I’ve wondered if they might want volunteers to help them rebuild the town during the next couple of summers, but I have a bad back and I’m not sure how much I could help there.
I find that as the climate continues to change with hotter and more fire-prone summers in the Pacific Northwest, the more weather, smoke and fires must be taken into account when planning trips. It’s becoming a fact of life.
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Sports Editor Pierre LaBossiere can be contacted at plabossiere@peninsuladailynews.com.
