IT was time to move today and I hit the road and travelled the full length of the famed Icefield Parkway to get from Japser to a little corner of southern Alberta called Kananaskis Country.
My ride south left well before dawn, when I couldn't see anything from the bus window but the dark outline of the Rocky Mountain peaks against the cloudy night sky, and the light only started to creep across the landscape as I neared the famed Columbia Icefield.
During the warmer months tourists flock to this part of Canada to take tours on the glacier, riding along a stretch of the prehistoric ice in a special vehicle that can creep over the frozen surface, but at this time of year there's very little to see with the cloud hugging the mountains.
It was no accident that the early road workers called it "the road through the clouds" when they were working on the infrastructure project during The Great Depression.
As we drove I could see a couple of patches of the opaque blue ice that defines a glacier, but in the gloom of the mid-winter morning it was hard to make out where the mountains ended and the sky started.
My driver Fred explained the Athabasca Glacier was the spot that marked the boundary between Jasper National Park and Banff National Park, and while it looked like "an arbitrary line on a map" the location was actually decided by the flow of water.
"It's a watershed issue," Fred explained as we cruised along the empty road.
"Water in Jasper National Park goes to the Arctic Ocean and water from the Banff National Park goes to the Atlantic Ocean via Hudson Bay, and that decided the location of the boundary between the two national parks.
"There is a spot up on the Columbia Icefield called the 'triple apex hydro watershed' and, in theory, if there were three molecules of water sitting side by side one could go to the Arctic Ocean, one could go to the Pacific Ocean and one could go to the Atlantic Ocean."
Fred also explained the Icefields Parkway was avalanche country in the winter, with the road regularly closed by the snow that roars down the mountain and covers the asphalt for days at a time.
He explained I could identify the avalanche chutes by recognising the areas where blocks of mature trees stood right beside patches void of vegetation.
Fred told me that on some mornings, as he drives the road between Jasper and Banff, his journey is slowed with Parks officials dong the work necessary to prevent avalanches, which often means they cause the snow to tumble down the mountain under controlled circumstances.
"They once used a Howitzer (a military canon) with shells that were 1m long, but they decided that probably wasn't the best way," he said.
"Now they fly a helicopter around, with the door open so they can kick out shells that are set to explode after the helicopter has cleared the area, and the noise and vibration of that explosion moves the unstable snow causing an avalanche."