Sunday, September 4 dawned another beautiful day in Canada.
We decided to head out to Yoho National Park. Yoho is located in British Columbia, between Glacier and Banff national parks.Yoho National Park boasts towering rock wall, spectacular waterfalls, and 28 peaks over 9840 feet in height - it's no wonder that the word "yoho" is a Cree expression of awe and amazement. Yoho National Park was created in 1886 and encompasses 505.6 square miles of the Rocky Mountains Western slopes.
Our first stop was at the view area for the Spiral Tunnels for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1884, the Canadian Pacific Railway could spare neither time or money to care a gradual descent down the west side of the kicking Horse Pass. Instead, the CPR obtained the federal government's permission for a steep but temporary line. The proposed Big Hill track dropped at a dizzying 4.5% grade - twice the maximum allowed in their government contract.
Going down, it took a combination of spur lines, safety switches and signals to keep the trains under control; going up, it took extra engines to push them over the pass. The line was costly to operate - and dangerous! There had to be a better way.....
Work on the tunnels began in September 1907, and was completed 20 months later. One thousand men were involved in the construction, working for $2.25 per day. In each tunnel, crews advanced in from both ends..and eventually met within five centimeters of perfect precision. The Spiral Tunnels line doubled the length of the original Big Hill but cut the grade in half. A very impressive engineering accomplishment!
Our next stop was at TaKakkaw Falls. Takakkaw means "magnificent" in Cree, and when you stand at the base of these falls you can see why. This 833 foot high waterfall is one of the highest in Canada.
Daly Glacier, 1150 feet from the brink of Takakkaw Falls feed the falls, the glacier in turn is fed by the Waputik Ice field. Snow falling on the ice field becomes moving ice in the glacier, which melts to become Takakkaw Falls.
Looking at these falls, it is easy to understand how Yoho came by its
motto - "rockwalls and waterfalls".From Takakkaw Falls we continued onto Emerald Lake. Yoho's 61 lakes and ponds. We walked the 3.22 miles around the lake. What a beautiful way to spend an afternoon!! Emerald lake is fed by glaciers and is dammed by a glacial moraine. The lake occupies a basin surrounded by high mountains. This arrangement results in frequent rain in the summer and heavy snows in winter.
The next stop on our visit to Yoho National Park was at the Natural Bridge. In this part of the valley, Kicking Horse River is eroding a shallow canyon through weak shales of the Chancellor Formation. However, at Natural Bridge it encounters a tightly folded outcrop that offers more resistance to the flowing water. The river has succeeded in eroding a channel through the rock to undercut it, just upstream from its edge to undercut the crooked bridge.
In terms of geological time, the Natural Bridge will be a temporary feature. Eventually, the river will completely undermine it, and the bridge will collapse. Then a new waterfall may form upstream.
Downstream, you can see rock formations in the riverbed that suggest
where this process took place in the past.
The scenery here is so beautiful and I took so MANY photos, I just do not have time here to show them all. We can hardly wait for tomorrow to see what we will discover on our next adventure.
More from Canada later,
Candy and Johnny
