Not long out of Edson the heat on the bus gave up, and most of the passengers bailed at Hinton. There were four of us left. We were already behind schedule due to a delay with security checks at Edmonton, and as we began to climb into the mountains the weather worsened. There was talk of blizzard-like conditions, and for large stretches only one lane on the highway was useable. The wind picked up, and in some places the ice on the road had frozen so hard that the snowploughs seemed to simply bounce off it.

Suddenly the Rockies loomed out of the murk, massive and imposing as they always are when approached from the east. We pulled into Jasper, and I stepped off. I didn't need to pause to put my coat or hat or gloves on, as I was already wearing them inside the freezing bus.

At this point, I realised that I had no idea where I was going to go. I had planned to find the Hostel, but I'd forgotten to look at a map before I left Edmonton, and I had no idea where it was. I didn't fancy a repeat performance of the previous evening, where I spent two and a half hours wandering around in -28 degrees looking for it. I felt the wind and the snow, blowing into my face like sand, and remembered something about -40 windchills in the weather forecast. Right across the road from the bus station was a sign that said 'Inn', with a glowing 'vacancy' below it. Sometimes things are just fated to work out certain ways, you know?

I had a chance to walk around Jasper before my bus left the next morning, but as it was still basically a snowstorm it wasn't the best conditions for a sightseeing stroll. The bad weather continued through the mountains, and on the far side we were held up by a semi that had run off the freeway.

As we descended into British Columbia, though, I noticed that the snowflakes seemed larger, and the snow lay thicker and stickier on the ground. And when I got out of the bus at Blue River, it seemed warmer. Still a good -10, but not as cold as it was in Alberta. And the trees on the B.C. side of the mountains were larger.

We spent the rest of the afternoon cruising down through the Cariboo, the rugged highland area in the middle of British Columbia between the Rockies and the Coast Mountains. The weather cleared up, and the sun came out. We reached Kamloops after nightfall, about an hour and a half behind schedule. It was fairly easy going from then on in, though, as the roads had been salted and were free of snow and ice.It was 11 degrees when I got back in Abbotsford - positively tropical after Alberta. That's what the locals call the pineapple express, the warm air moving in off the Pacific Ocean.