For our 25th anniversary, we decided to go to Jasper for the weekend. We have been going there for our anniversary for the last four years. This year we booked a swanky room with a fireplace and such at the Jasper Park Lodge. We went dog sledding (another post) on the Saturday and on Sunday we did the Maligne Canyon Icewalk. For anyone who has been to Jasper you have probably hiked the Maligne Canyon in the summertime. Its a great walk along the top of the canyon where you get to look down the crevices and cracks to the water below and see the waterfalls along the canyon. Well….the wintertime is a whole different story. You don’t walk along the trails at the top of the canyon, you actually walk along the canyon floor which is made up of ice. The ice is feet and feet deep. It is a really cool feeling to be walking down there and looking up to where we usually walk. The guide told some great stories of ice climbers and how they made it or didn’t make the wall climbing. There have actually been some deaths down there as well.
Here are some pictures of the canyon in the winter time. Hope you enjoy them.
The start of the ice walk. The beginning of the canyon.
The hole in the ice in a bottomless hole that no one was allowed near. Someone actually fell down there and died so the guide was very adamant that we stay away.
The view from below of the view from above.
A wall of ice that you could walk underneath
The Canyon Floor
Ice Walls
More Ice Floor
The bridge that is used on the trails on the top of the canyon.
One of the many ice formations
More ice formations
Continuing down the river bend would eventually take you back to town.
