Good - Fair - Poor

I've driven the Icefield Parkway (between Jasper and Banff) quite a bit during the last couple of years, sometimes in the winter. They have a display board at each end of the Parkway giving the highway conditions... good - fair - poor. And those are winter driving conditions. But I'm really not sure what they mean! I've driven the highway when the posted condition was Poor and met nothing but bare and wet or even bare and dry road conditions. I've driven it while it was Fair and it's basically perfect winter driving conditions - not a speck of snow in sight. So, in checking the road conditions online, it's always good to take it with a grain of salt. So when I checked it Friday, it said Lake Louise to Jasper Park Border was Fair and Jasper Park Border to Jasper was Poor. Doesn't sound too bad... so I started off Saturday morning and the first hiccup was backed up traffic just outside Lake Louise. Turns out there were a couple of jack-knifed semis in the direction of Field on the Trans Canada, but the Icefields was open... so that was good news! The Icefields however was another story... It had apparently snowed overnight and the snowplows were not yet out... 3 inches of snow became 6 inches of snow became 12 inches of snow... At one point the highway was basically a single lane of tire ruts in the freshly fallen snow. And this was Poor... Yep... I would agree with that!! But the section from Jasper Park Border to Jasper was actually pretty good, plowed and sanded with even bare and dry for some sections. Checking the road reports at the end of the day however, it was listed as Poor as well... Go figure... Moral of the story... don't believe everything you read! Even this!