Had an easy drive through the mountains, stopping very briefly to take a pic of Mt Robson en route on our way to Wells Grey this afternoon. Such beautiful scenery on either side of us and thankfully only one or two chicken fucking morons on the highway.
We also encountered, and seemed to travel with for quite some time, a very large group of Harley enthusiasts on our travels, which had a strange way of keeping the traffic around them well behaved. Maybe my fellow motorists had also seen one too many episodes of Sons of Anarchy too, but it seems people are very reluctant to over take bikies in full leathers and patches when they are with thirty mates! We arrived in Clearwater, the small town at the base of the park, and stopped to pick up some supplies (only White this time, still had some Red left)… saw this very err, interesting sign that I just HAD to stop and take a photo of:
Makes me wonder if it’s one of those places people send their potentially homosexual children to have the ‘gay prayed outta them’. 😛 Yeah, I watch too many movies. First thing we did was pop into the Information Centre to collect some info on what is to see on the park as the Lonely Planet was proving as useless as tits on a bull for this one… perhaps because of it’s inaccessibility – this is one park you definitely don’t want to hike or backpack into, it is about 70km of roads in before you even hit any of the plethora of hiking trails.
We decided to make our way to our accommodation, Helmcken Falls Lodge but first thought we would stop at some of the lookouts and one of the waterfalls which was on the way. We stopped first at a lookout, that gave a sweeping panoramic view down the entire Clearwater Canyon, which was just off the side of the road and was quite unexpected. We found ourselves parked at the top of a huge precipice looking down into an enormous valley, that had a river running through it. Really quite a spectacular spot.
After that we went for a short walk to see the awkwardly named, Spahat Falls. As soon as we left the car park area, I could hear the water rushing somewhere in the near distance, but nothing could prepare us for the sight we were about to encounter a mere five minute walk from the car… a waterfall of unknown height but certainly significant grandeur, was right in front of us. I quite literally was unable to capture it – unable to give the falls any scale and they lost all their impact and enormity, thanks to the itty bitty viewing screen of my camera! I haven’t seen a waterfall like this in years, perhaps since I was a kid up in The Territory. Huge volcanic red strata rock walls lined each side of the canyon, and the water spilling out of a crevice in the rock, was dropping an easy 180-200 feet onto massive boulders below, sending up large billows of mist into the air swirling at the bottom of the falls. Absolutely amazing. Such an unexpectedly beautiful sight so soon after our arrival here… and apparently not even the largest or most spectacular of the falls in Wells Grey.
As the afternoon was getting on and it had been a really, really long day – literally THE longest day of the year, seeing how it was the 21st of June 😛 , and we gained an extra hour as we came down from Mountain Time to Pacific Time and I’d been up since 0530. We went and checked into our room at the Helmcken Falls Lodge (Helmcken… another odd word, between this and the Spahat, it makes me feel like people round here don’t know how to spell!), and found much to my delight… more hummingbirds! 😀 They have some feeders up on the verandah where the restaurant is, so we had dinner of some very yummy mushroom soup and sat behind a mesh screen watching the hummingbirds buzz around us barely a couple of feet away while we ate.
Now, we were going to call it a day, as we had been out doing most of Jasper and Lake Maligne that morning but… down in the reception there was a sign up that predicted foul weather was afoot for tomorrow, and that was enough to spur us onto go back out after dinner. I am loving the long twilights, it gives you plenty of opportunity to go see things well up until 10pm compared to summer at home where it’s pitch dark by 7:30pm – 8pm (curse our lack of day light saving!). We head off to the next nearest water falls, which are thankfully slightly easier to pronounce and spell – Dawsons Falls 🙂 It was only a short walk down to the viewing areas to see the falls, but alas… we had forgotten about the damn mozzies, and left the insect repellent back at the cabin, so it was a powerwalk to keep ahead of the little buggers out to the falls. There are two viewing areas over Dawsons Falls one from the bottom where you can see how wide and high they are, and one at the top where you can get a feel for the huge volume of water that is tumbling over this terrain.
It was moving unbelievably fast! And there was just so much water. Watching the torrent of water moving so fast, and the mist rise from it as it crashed over the rocks at the bottom in the rapidly setting sun was really beautiful. Made me want to throw something in to see how fast it would be swept away. 🙂 Next we took a drive a little further into the park to see Helmcken Falls while the light quality was still great for taking photos. Another quick sprint into the viewing areas to keep ahead of the mosquitos and we were greeted by yet another spectacular waterfall. This one is apparently the highest in the park at, 452 feet. I am certain my photos don’t do it justice, it was magnificent. The falls cut through a unique landscape that was formed first by volcanic movement and enormous lava holes, that was then apparently calved through by glaciers and is now being eroded by the waterways leaving a huge bowl like structure where these falls pass now.
There is a walk that goes around the rim that you can see in this picture that we are considering doing tomorrow if the weather manages to triumph over the predictions, but we shall have to wait and see. After taking way too many photos of the Helmcken (yeah, still a stupid word) waterfall, it was starting to get dark, so we flipped a coin and decided to drive up to the highest point in the park and check out the Green Tower Hill Lookout. The road up was really windy and narrow and I was very glad we were the only ones out and about so late. Then suddenly the road narrowed even further, changed to be an unsealed surface full of bumps and rocks and started to double back on itself in tight hairpin turns. Far out I was hoping there was no one coming the other way! It was really dark forest we were going through when we popped out the top and into a huge clearing with a tall viewing platform. You could see the mountain ranges around the canyon in a 360 degree view. Absolutely stunning.
But we could also see tomorrows weather rolling in and were suddenly very glad we had decided to take this after dinner jaunt.
Looks like we will get to try and have a sleep in tomorrow morning cos the rains a coming!
To be continued…
As predicted we woke up to a very rainy miserable day, feeling very smug for having hit the highlights of Wells Grey last night. Pottered around and had a leisurely breakfast over looking the grounds of the lodge where out cabin is and watched as the weather lifted somewhat towards mid morning. Decided to divide and conquer today and Aunty Mary went off to do the Mineral Springs Walk from Ray’s Farm near Alice Creek, while I went off in search of Bailey’s Chute – an area of the Clearwater River with pretty fierce rapids that the chinook salmon traverse every fall when they come over 600kms inland to spawn.
In August and September the area attracts a lot of bears, osprey and eagles as they find the exhausted salmon easy pickings in this part of the river. Today we saw two more black/brown bears eating and ambling beside the road. They were in a lot of dense underbrush so you could hardly see these guys compared to yesterday’s bears so did not quite go to town the way I did yesterday with the photos. 🙂