Maligne Canyon and Lake

Edith Cavell Mountain

We woke up to a beautiful day in Jasper National Park. We started the day by taking the road to the base of Edith Cavell Mountain. This mountain stands out from the others here because it is covered with snow and has an active glacier on it. The road climbs quickly from the river valley and we are soon rewarded with a view of a U shaped valley reminding us of Yosemite Valley with the granite peaks on either side. At the top was a short path called the Path of the Glacier. We noticed, however, that it looked like part of the parking lot had been swept away by a flood. Sure enough the last third of the trail was considered too dangerous. In August, 2012, a part of the Ghost Glacier calved off and fell in Cavell lake which led to a 3-4 meter swell of water pouring down the canyon. The path remains closed next to the lake in fear that this could happen again.

We headed for Maligne Canyon afterwards, stopping for a picnic lake next to one of the many lakes in the region. The Maligne river got its name from a French trapper who had great difficulty crossing the river, given it the name Maligne like the word, maligned. The canyon is actually a deep gorge with many waterfalls and whirlpools among the rocks. It was quite colorful in spots because of the green and gold mosses hanging next to the white washed rocks. Mary took the first two bridges which were fairly easy, while I went a little further to the third bridge, which was a steeper climb down and back. As we were nearing the parking lot, we caught a rare sight, a mother bear and her cub. The park service had created a fence line to keep people from getting to close to the river, unfortunately the bears were on opposite sides of the fence. We left rather quickly, since we figured this could become a problem when the mother discovered her cub surrounded by humans on the other side of the fence.

We continued down the road to Maligne Lake. The scenery along the way was picturesque, especially the view toward the mountains at Medicine Lake. I had planned to take the 90 minute boat ride to Spirit Island on the lake until we saw that was the price $64/person, about the same as our annual pass to the Canadian Park System. We decided to take a short hike along the lake shore instead. The lake is the deepest in the park, and it has many mountain peaks around it, most still sporting snow in late July.

Maligne Lake