We took a Snocoach tour from the Icefields Center on the Icefields Parkway located in Banff National Park. Each specialized Snocoach takes a busload of tourists to the nearby Athabasca Glacier, where they depart and get to take an up close and personal look at a glacier.
Karla stands on the Athabasca Glacier
Up close glacier views from the Snocoach tour
My favorite part of the tour, and I suspect I’m not alone, was the Snocoach used to gain access to the glacier. The Snocoach is a custom made, $1.3 million bus that rides high on six huge tires necessary to negotiate the glacial terrain. Those tires cost $5000 each and are a size 1000/50R25! To put that into perspective, our Jeep Wrangler has ridiculously wide and tall tires whose numbers are 315/70R17.
A Snocoach heads up a steep hill (32% grade)
The Snocoach is propelled by six wheel drive via a Mercedes-Benz diesel engine. The transmission is a custom $200,000 Allison unit that has a very low range gear. How low? The bus weighs 70,000 pounds and drove down a long 32% grade (the steepest non-paved road in North America) and the driver never touched the brakes.
To protect the glacier, Snocoaches drive through this large puddle before driving onto it
The Snocoach tour is very popular among tourists
The glacier itself offered amazing views, but was packed with tourists taking selfies and filling water bottles in the “pristine” glacier melt stream that other tourists just 20 feet upstream are standing in.
Tourists checking out the A&A Glacier, visible from the Athabasca Glacier
