Jasper National Park

Aug. 15-18, 2004

Upon entering Jasper National Park, we discovered that many of the employees of Parks Canada were on strike. Fortunately, they hadn't closed the park, so we could enter. In addition, most of the campgrounds were open, so we could find a place to stay. The strike really meant that they weren't staffing information booths or offering interpretive talks, and some facilities, such as the Miette Hot Springs, were closed. There was enough smoke and haze in the air to obscure most mountain views, so we concentrated on things closer at hand.
 

The Valley of the Five Lakes was a pleasant, and easy, day hike. These are a string of lakes with a beautiful blue-green color that varied from lake to lake, depending on the water depth.
 

Maligne (pronounced "mah-LEEN") Canyon is very impressive. It is a very narrow canyon cut by the Maligne River; the canyon depth is as much as 100 feet and the canyon width is very narrow, as little as 10 feet in places. Obviously you walk along the edge, not inside the canyon.
 

Trees manage to grow in the darnedest places. This one seem to be growing on moss on bare rock.
 

Near the end of the canyon (it was about 2 miles long), we saw some areas where water was pouring out of the rocks; it seems that part of the river flows underground for a while.
 

This bull elk showed up in the campground one morning. He seemed to like the grass and bushes outside the kitchen shelter. The elk would let me get rather close - about 30 feet away (the guideline from the park is to stay at least 100 feet away from elk). At one point he started walking towards me, and I backed off. But it turned out that his destination was a bush near where I was standing.

After grazing a while, he would go into the kitchen shelter to chew his cud; at least that is what it looked like to me. Then he would go back outside and eat some more. Why he chose the kitchen shelter, I'm not sure. Perhaps it was to get out of the sun, or to make himself less visible to people. As you can imagine, he attracted quite a crowd.
 

We went off for the day. When we came back in the afternoon, the elk was napping outside the shelter. He must have been there all day long. Later, a group of noisy kids discovered the elk. The elk then took off; he probably wanted some peace and quiet.
 

 A little ways south on the Icefields Parkway are the Athabaska Falls, which are very nice.  While not very high, they are impressive for the volume of water going over the falls.