Answering the call of the wild

WHEN summer comes to Canada's pristine wilderness in the Rockies, there's plenty to do and admire, including the animals that come out to play.

Horse riding on the outskirts of Jasper.

WHEN summer comes to Canada's pristine wilderness in the Rockies, there's plenty to do and admire, including the animals that come out to play.

"Forget the bears, it's the elk you gotta worry about round here." I've barely been in Jasper an hour and already a local in an oily trucker cap is warning me what deadly animals to watch out for.

"I been chased a few times on my bike. It's either the mothers protecting their babies, or the randy males in season thinking you're trying to thieve their ladies from 'em."

Welcome to Jasper, smack-bang in the middle of the largest national park in the Rocky Mountains. This deep in the Rockies, there's a heck of a lot more cougars, coyotes, mountain goats, elk and bears than people. Even the best radio station is called Bear Radio.

Elk feed by the roadsides. Though they advise you not to stop to photograph them, you can't drive 5km around here without hitting an "elk jam".

Even on the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge's golf course - which happens to be Canada's highest-rated resort course — it's best to avoid looking for your errant drive should you slice it right off the eighth tee. Why? "'Cause that's where the grizzlies are," a young golf pro tells me. "We usually see at least one every day at the start of summer. They're OK though, it's not like we go pat them."

And within the perfectly coiffed confines of the adjoining Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge - which looks down on to the bluest lake in all of North America - elk wander about at will. One evening as I down a late twilight cocktail looking out across the mountains, an elk comes within a few metres of my seat out on the lawn.

"Don't worry," a barman advises when I spill my caprioska down my shirt. "You live in Jasper, you get used to sharing with animals. As far as I know though, there's few attacks so we must be sharing it pretty fairly."

There are few prettier locations on earth than right here. Surrounded by the Rockies, Jasper is part of an 11,000sq km tract of wilderness linked by rail and the world's most scenic highway.

But while Banff to the south has a carefully constructed veneer of perfect uniformity to its streetscape, Jasper is still rough around the edges, belying its past as a railway town (even as it's become one of Alberta's major tourist hot spots). There are too many unsightly motels and old-fashioned souvenir shops (Buffalo Betty's Gifts anyone?) for Jasper itself to get on any chocolate box cover - but that's its appeal; there's more character in these two blocks of town than you can hope to soak up in a single holiday.

There's still more railway men in the Whistle Stop Pub than tourists from Europe or Australia (60 per cent of the town's population still work for the railway) and they say local kids learn to count by tallying up the number of carriages on trains that cut through town every hour or so.

The railway station is still at the heart of Jasper - and there are railway carriages stacked up here, and unsightly piles of dirt and gravel and railway beams - but nothing in Canada's as pretty as throwing Frisbees at twilight in the park in Jasper's main street, while people strum guitars and sip on beers, lapping up every last sun ray of summer.

Or taking a late evening bike ride by the raging snow-fed Athabasca River that cuts through the edge of town as all the afternoon colours drain out of the mountains that dwarf you on all sides.

There's a regular flow of joggers, hikers, bikers and families out with their kids, but sometimes I have the narrow trails to myself and the silence is so intoxicating and golden that for a moment I don't even think of cougars or bears.

In among all this wilderness is, as you might imagine, an adventure seeker's paradise, though most who come this way barely do more than drive around being dazzled by the landscape and the never-ending fields of wildflowers that blossom by the sides of the road.

One sunny morning I take a rafting tour, getting to the river by walking down a track Marilyn Monroe had built for her while she filmed the 1954 movie River Of No Return, and launch into the freezing waters of the Athabasca River. We raft through rapids and into calm eddies while ospreys and eagles circle above and a solitary black bear trudges past on the riverbank. Wildflowers of red, white, purple, yellow and pink line the river, behind them some of Canada's tallest mountains roll on to the horizon. There's everything here from easy family rafting excursions to high-octane grade-three river thrills.

Some of Canada's top natural attractions are just down the road from Jasper, including Maligne Lake, the second-largest glacier-fed lake in the world; Medicine Lake, the mysterious disappearing lake sacred to Canada's indigenous inhabitants; and Athabasca Falls, the most powerful waterfall in the whole Rockies, 32km to Jasper's south. Head a little further southward and you'll also discover the Columbia Icefield, the largest icefield south of Alaska.

There's no shortage of kinetic movement around town. Every activity is catered for - from hiking to canoeing to mountain biking to horse riding to wildlife tours. Jasper visibly suffers from teenage-like hyperactivity that makes you feel almost guilty for lounging outside in the sunshine eating and drinking … almost.

Stores in Jasper's main street advertise every type of outdoor attraction imaginable, though I get as much of a kick from riding my bike along paths cut from the forest and on narrow bridges above the roaring Athabasca from the Fairmont into town.

And though the road that leads here from tourist hot spot Banff is one of the prettiest stretches of tarmac on the planet, I get more pleasure from arriving here by train, as travellers have done since the railroad started up in 1881.

From the coast at Vancouver, you'll cross mountain ranges and snake your way through thick spruce and pine forest passing bears and wolves along the way. When you hit Jasper a day later, the scale of the wilderness you've entered strikes you an almighty blow.

But you're safe out here in the Canadian wilderness, provided you don't go thieving elk from any randy bucks.

* The writer was a guest of Travel Alberta.

GO2 CANADA

> Getting there

Air Canada flies direct to Vancouver from Sydney daily.

See aircanada.com or

ph 1300 655 767

Via Rail departs Vancouver every evening for Jasper and arrives the following afternoon.

See viarail.ca

> Staying there

The Fairmont Jasper Lodge offers 446 rooms on 770ha of wilderness beside Lake Beauvert and Canada's best resort golf course.

See fairmont.com

> Doing there

Rafting adventures for all ages can be booked at jasperraftingadventures.com

For a list of all activities on offer, see jasper.travel/things-to-do

> More information

travelalberta.com.au

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