River of ice: Visitors can stand on a glacier at Alberta's Jasper National Park

JASPER NATIONAL PARK, Alberta — Ice and snow. Snow and ice. The famed Columbia Icefield is the mother lode of frozen stuff outside the Arctic Circle.

If there's one "must-visit" spot in Jasper National Park, this is it.

Located 2½ hours (124 miles) from the town of Banff, an hour (62 miles) from the town of Jasper, or about 210 miles northwest of Calgary, it sits just across the border from Banff National Park along the appropriately named Icefields Parkway.

Columbia is simply a Canadian icon. It is in the world-class league, like the Great Wall of China, the Statue of Liberty or the Egyptian Pyramids — western Canada's most unique attraction.

Here you can stand on glacial ice almost as thick as the Eiffel Tower (250 meters) is tall. This is the most accessible glacier in the world.

A large modern visitor center, Icefield Centre (elevation 6,600 feet) orients visitors to the Columbia Icefield. It is here, too, where you can lodge in one of 32 guest rooms, enjoy a gift shop, dine in one of two restaurants or visit its museum.

Here is also the staging area for an 80-minute tour of a toe of the Columbia Icefield — the Athabasca section. Tour buses haul visitors up a road to where "Brewster Ice Explorer" buses, specially designed for glacial travel, take you safely deep into the toe of the glacier.

At about $50 Canadian per person, the guided tour allows riders to walk on the glacier and even take a drink of its fabulous, pure waters.

The tour is wheelchair-accessible and suitable for children, too.

For those who want a different experience, they can drive a separate mile-long paved road. A parking lot here allows access to a 600-yard hike to the edge of the actual glacier.

Warning signs discourage hikers from proceeding to or across the actual ice itself, but many still do it and hike up the slope anyway — in the direction of where the guided bus tours go.

Notwithstanding, several hikers have fallen into crevasses along the Athabasca Glacier. In fact, in 2001, a young boy fell into such a fissure and could not be rescued before he died from hypothermia.

Rushing water at the tip of the glacier, as well as the erosion visible underneath the edge of the ice, are strong clues that nature is in motion here.