Western Canada Exploration 2025

Hello all!

My name is Taylor. Check out my intro page over here; https://www.tundras.com/threads/hello-from-alberta.154445/

My goal with this thread is to document the trips I take with my Family over 2025. We will primarily be staying in the Western Canada region (Alberta and BC) but with possible trips to Ontario to see family and I would like to get down to Montana's East Glacier National Park again. I spent some time there working about a decade ago and would like to see it from an adventures eye this time instead of a workers eye.

I will update this thread with each new trip, details of said trip as well as pictures! This will be primarily overlanding, but there will be some off-roading in here as well. This truck is my DD and will not be built to take on crazy boulder gardens, but I'm not afraid of dents and pinstriping!

I don't think I'll do anything crazy enough to warrant a Build Thread, so I may just put the updates and Upgrades to my truck in here and treat it as a sort of all encompassing journal to refer back to.

 

First Trip of the Year!
Grande Prairie AB - Golden BC - Abraham AB

Myself, my Wife Dez, our daughter V and our Dog Mack really wanted to go see the Methane bubbles in the ice at Abraham Lake in Southern AB. So we left around 830am on Saturday Feb 1st and decided to take the scenic route through some of our Beautiful Parks! Taking HWY 40 South from Grande Prairie, we travelled to Grande Cache and stopped for a bathroom break for the kiddo and dog, topped up on coffee and carried on our way! A handful of KM South of Grande Cache on HWY 40 is Grande Cache Lake. A favorite stop of mine in the Summer months, but not one I've been to in the Winter. The lake was full of Ice Fishing Huts, so I decided to drive out onto the lake within the boundary of the Huts since the Wife and Kid have never done that before. Snagged a quick picture too!



Next leg of the Journey was to make it down to Jasper! I haven't been there since it was on fire last year. The damage was not as bad as expected and rumored, although it was still absolutely devastating. There was a small amount of damage on the North end of town (Edson side) but the South end of town was pretty much gone. Tons of residential, quite a few commercial buildings as well. Everything is more or less gated and fenced up for the cleanup. I don't think any repairs have really started yet. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of this as I was driving and town was still pretty busy.

Just before we hit Jasper, the Big Horn Sheep were on the roadside. Ever reliable with their presence lol. I don't think I've ever been through without seeing them.




Once we left Jasper we heading towards the Icefield Parkway. This is one of my favorite spots in Summer Months as you can get right up to the Toe of the Glacier and they do Glacier tours as well. I can't convince the Wife to do the tour since those people died back in 2020 when the Ice Explorer Bus rolled.




We had quite a lot of driving left to do and the weather was turning on us, so we continued on our way. Roughly 10KM after the Icefield, the road was covered in snow. Ruts and drifts as high as my bumper in a lot of areas. The roads stayed like this for the next 100+KM until we hit the turn off for Golden and Yoho.




We had a few rescue missions while on the road. Couple cars that decided they could make it found out very quickly they could not. Couple hours later we turned off at the Lake Louise exit and onto Yoho National Park. Unfortunately it was very dark, so we didn't get to enjoy the sights too much. Also this is where I started to get pretty frustrated. I've had the truck for about a month and drive at night frequently. I've never had an issue with other drivers flashing their lights at me. As soon as I got into BC, just about every other car, truck, semi, whatever, kept flashing me their brights. The lights are completely stock 2020s. To mitigate and stop getting blinded, I adjusted the lights all the way down (I normally keep them at about 2 since I have a small lift and 0 would be quite uncomfortable for oncoming traffic.)



Pulled into 714KM later. No tent on the truck yet (Still on the 4runner) so we opted for a hotel! I had enough Wyndham points for a free stay and we chose the Days Inn. We chose wrong haha. The staff was incredibly nice which was the saving grace. I won't get too much into the actual Hotel or amenities or general cleanliness but I will say, we would have rather spent the night in the tent and it was -30c that night.

Early morning wake up (5am) so we could be on the road for 530 to make it Abraham Lake for sunrise. We did make it to "Belly of Abraham" before Sunrise, although it was heavily overcast so we didn't get to see the sunrise we wanted. We did however manage to snag some cool pictures of the Mountains and ice trough the morning haze.





We checked out the Bubbles in the ice and saw some cool ice formations, played around on the ice and in the snow until we were all too cold to continue. We decided to head towards Nordegg and check out our favorite camping spot closer to the Dam. Here is the 4runner the year before in that spot, then the Tundra in the same spot but different season.




And here is a picture to explain why its one of our favorite spots lol.



I'll tell you now, it'll be hard to find a better place for a coffee in the morning.




After the quick visit to our spot, we did a bit of exploring, tested out some of the off-road capabilities of the Tundra (I'm fairly impressed!), then went into Nordegg to fuel up, check out the Beehive Artisan Market and start to long trek home!

All said and done, the trip was 1560 KM. I averaged 20.5L/100KM (11.5 MPG) I blame the crappy fuel mileage on having to bust trail for almost 200KM lol. Before that happened I was averaging 16.5L/100KM (14.2 MPG) while on almost 35's, winter fuel and mountain driving. Total of 368 Liters of fuel used at an average price of 1.55/L for a cost of Roughly $500.00 Canadian Pesos.

All said and done, it was a fun trip and the Tundra did well! I was able to narrow down some things that I would like to improve, add or change. I was finally able to see the road manners of my new wheel and tire set up! (Icon Rebound in 18x9 +25mm Offset with Yokohama Geolander AT XD in 295/70R18)

Up next will be the Bed Rack system and moving the RTT from the 4Runner over the the Tundy! We can't wait for our next trip! I'm not sure if this is where we will go, but we are eyeing up Liard Hot Springs up in the Territories.

 

Was able to sneak away during one of our Canadian Long weekends (Family Day) and get a bit of local exploring in and more than a few "Custom" pinstripes. I used to ride my dirtbike in this area a lot before it was logged heavily for a Fire Break when we had some really bad Fires around my town a few years back. I haven't been out here since then and I've never been out there in Winter, so it was fun to see! Spent an hour checking things out and putting the new tires through some more testing.

I'm still blown away by the performance of these Yokohama Geloander AT XD G017 tires. The only area I feel they lack (so far) is on shear ice. It still hooks up and goes really well just used to the feel of studded winter tires and these will never be that lol. Although I will say in any sort of snow pack, fresh or otherwise, these tires hook up like velcro.

Nothing too crazy to report on this one, so I'll just leave you with the pictures! Although I will say, I would like to head back here without the Kid and the Dog and spend a day just seeing where I can get this thing (We have Hundreds of KM of trails local to me, during the Summer they are too busy with dirtbikers and quads and such so I don't want to bring a full size truck in there and have some kid on a dike smoke me coming around a blind corner.) Before I get too far into the stuff I know is there, I have to get my winch on and probably would not be a bad idea to pick up some MaxTrax lol.

 

Beautiful truck and awesome photos! Thank you for sharing!

 

Couple of cool updates!

One step closer to getting the new tent on the Tundra!

RCI HD Bed Rack. This one is technically for a long bed but it works with the 5,5 bed as well. I think the racks look goofy when they don't fill up the whole box so I went with this one.




Bad picture there for sure, Sun is in a pretty bad spot for pictures in my driveway t that time of day lol.

Then I took a short trip to Dawson Creek, BC. The start (Mile 0) of the Alaska Highway. It's pretty close to where I live. I've been here since 2015 and I've never grabbed a picture with this sign, so I figured I would now.





Lots of overcast days lately. Between that and the melt and general brownness of this area in spring, this is the best picture I'm going to get lol.