Tape VHS-2025-003 is a 25-minute tourism promotional video for the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park, Alberta. Produced in 1999, it was the kind of tape sold at gift shops near the glacier — Athabasca Glacier tours, Brewster Snocoach rides, Icefield Parkway scenery. The format was everywhere in the late 80s and 90s. Almost none of them survived.
The Tape
Condition: poor. A horizontal line runs through the middle of the frame. Color reproduction is off. This was either a rental copy or spent time somewhere that wasn’t kind to magnetic media. Runtime is 25 minutes, SP.
What’s On It
Glacier tours. The Athabasca. The Icefield Parkway. Brewster Snocoach — those big wheeled vehicles that drove tourists out onto the ice. The kind of footage that was shot as a souvenir, not as a document. Nobody was thinking about preservation.
The Athabasca Glacier has receded significantly since 1999. What’s on this tape is footage of a glacier that no longer looks the same.
The Production
Nella Schönefeld Productions. Zero web presence. Not on the Internet Archive, not on YouTube, not on IMDb, not on eBay. The production company appears to be gone. This is the only known surviving copy.
Archive Verdict
Tourism promotional VHS tapes from this era had short shelf lives. They got tossed when the gift shop closed, replaced by DVDs, or just degraded in storage. This one made it, barely. Poor recording quality, but the content is intact.
This tape streamed live on December 30, 2025. Watch the archive on Twitch.
Tape VHS-2025-003 · Columbia Icefield · Jasper National Park · 1999 · 25 minutes
