Holiday on ice

Nearby, fresh cougar prints puncture a snowy embankment and a herd of bighorn sheep graze with oblivious intent.

Mt Colin rises sheer behind the creased hills that rim a broad valley floor. The valley, in turn, spreads out to the east, where dark brown sand dunes -- the result of incessant wind activity -- strike a jarring note in this sub-Arctic terrain. This scene -- the inert man, the sheep with their enviable coats, the wildly beautiful but forbidding landscape -- is backlit by a mocking blue sky.

"We're having a cold snap," retired park ranger Wes Bradford says, ignoring the man in the pond and pointing instead at the bighorns that, although the most common ungulate here in Jasper National Park, tend to keep to themselves up on the ridges of the Canadian Rockies.

"They can't outrun their predators, so that's their escape mechanism," Bradford says.

At the icy pond, someone has at last come to the aid of the stranded man: it's an innocuous scene, after all, for as he's pulled out of the water I see he's wearing a thick red dry suit and is part of a rescue drill; as for the lurking cougar, in truth the animal is so elusive that many locals have never encountered one, and it's already long gone, melting into the snow-clad forest as if it were a ghost.

This remains an untameable frontier almost a century after winter holiday-makers first began to congregate here. My journey confirms this impression, for I've come here from Banff and Lake Louise by way of the Trans-Canada Highway and the Icefields Parkway, a 230km stretch of road that traces the valleys carved out by glaciers eons ago.

The route throws up vistas heavy with beauty and abandonment. There are mountains shaped by exquisite geometry; forests rendered ashen-grey by the random fall of snowflakes; and ominous signboards warning of avalanches and back-country conditions. And that empty, ice-paved road perseveres northwards along the Continental Divide into a cold so intense that just one mouthful will set your lungs on fire.

"The coldest we had was minus 54C in 1982," Bradford says, pointing out the beaver houses that project above the frozen lid of Talbot Lake. "But winter's too long to spend inside. You've got to enjoy those winter sports."

It's an especially invigorating season in the Rockies, forcing people out of their summer stupor and igniting every last languid nerve cell. The weather is marginally warmer in Banff, but ice still plugs its waterways and snow settles on footpaths and windscreens and eaves in fluffy layers.

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