Blog English – Arminius-on-tour

Sunwapta Falls, our first stop today, show the enormous power of water. Chaba River carved deeply into the rock, falls several metres into the depth, squeezes again with high pressure through a crevice, bangs on the opposite side against a rock face where it slowly washes out a cave, and eventually bends in a 90°-angle.

Next stop: Athabasca Falls. Also there a certain amount of water drops a determined amount of metres into the depth. Very nice, but one day there are enough pictures of lakes, waterfalls, and deer. The parking lot is nearly full despite rainy weather.

Via a side road we want to go to Jasper city to fill up with diesel and get some food. A glance to the right, here it plods. It is an adult grizzly bear, although not as big as the last one. It’s roamering through the forest; it’s just not possible to get a picture of it. Fortunately there is a forest path where we can turn off, and a clearing. The grizzly is sniffing around the meadow, we get some photos, and quickly he’s gone into the wood. We drive down to the highway to maybe catch him again, but we see only two deer fleeing. Few hundreds of metres further a herd of elk mothers with their white-spotted fawns are crossing the road. Grizzly bears, wolfs and cougars are predators of adult elks, fawns and young animals are hunted by coyotes, black bears, and lynx. Today’s grizzly shouldn’t be our last one…

In Jasper we accidentally run into a pizzeria that has got TV. UEFA world cup game Germany vs. Uruguay is running. Germany wins 3:2 and is now world champion in achieving the 3^rd place. At least something.

On continuing our trip we finally find mountain goats, licking minerals on the side of the road. They are short-haired and light brown now; they already lost their splendid long white winter fur.

Maligne Canyon is a must in Jasper NP. The ravine with the fateful name is famous. An actually small creek engraved down to 50 metres into the limestone. At the same time it forms waterfalls, rapids, openings, natural bridges, washouts, and overhangs. In some places you can’t see the brook since it is only a few metres wide and it cut the rock zigzagging on the way down so that the view to the water is obstructed. Just the sound of rapidly flowing water remains – from far down. The park management built six bridges over the canyon at the most interesting sites. You walk sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left side of Maligne River and you get exciting photos everywhere.

This entry was posted on Samstag, Juli 10th, 2010 at 20:34 and is filed under Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.