Scenes from Jasper National Park

The second day of our Jasper trip was spent in the Maligne Valley, including a visit to the Maligne Canyon and a boat cruise down Maligne Lake.

We did the boat cruise first, taking advantage of an earlier, less crowded boat. But, having avoided the crowds there, we arrived later at Maligne Canyon where it was jammed with people. Oh well, I got some good experience with my face mask.

I begin with a few pictures from Maligne Canyon, a slot canyon, eroded out of the Palliser Formation. The canyon measures over 50 metres (160 ft) deep in places. Popular for sightseeing and exploration, the area contains waterfalls, underground stream outlets, birds and plant life.

Today, I begin with a video taken with my iPhone, showing the Maligne River flowing through the canyon near its upper end. Having parallelled the river along the Maligne Lake Road on our return northward, I was a little astonished to see that same river channelled into such a narrow canyon. The video provides a better sense of the raw power of the water as it thunders down the canyon.

My first photograph was taken a little further downstream, with the river continuing its relentless plunge toward the Athabasca River.

This photograph was taken just across from the fourth crossing of the chasm on my trek downstream. It’s a good illustration of just how narrow the canyon is in some locations. They don’t call it a slot canyon for no good reason.

This is my favourite picture from Maligne Canyon, a nice scene including a glimpse of the dense forest in the bottom. It’s really green down in the canyon with constant irrigation of the flora from the mist generated by the cascading water.

There is no particular order to the sequence of today’s photographs. This is a picture of Pyramid Mountain I took early the following morning, before our return trip to Canmore. It’s situated across the Athabasca River, just west of our hotel. My attention was attracted to the rugged face and colour of the mountain.

Now I’m ready to talk about our boat trip, beginning with this photograph looking southward down Maligne Lake toward our destination, Spirit Island. It was a sombre, overcast day but otherwise quite pleasant. Not much rain, no wind and moderately warm. This is a good candidate for conversion to black and white, but I really like the water colour so I left it alone.

We arrived at Spirit Island about 30 minutes after our departure from the Maligne Lake Cruise wharves. I’ve wanted to go there for some time. Why? It’s famous. It’s beautiful. It’s a Canadian Rockies icon. It’s image is well known world-wide. It has spiritual significance to Canada’s indigenous people and is considered sacred ground. I was fortunate to get a number of photographs during our brief stop there.

The weather and the light were not the best while we were there, so no amazing colours. I have created a black and white version and I think it works better.

We spent two great days in this beautiful area of Alberta. Sometimes you need to pinch yourself!