Bear Creek Falls

The trailhead for Bear Creek Falls is found at the end of a dead-end road that branches off of the Trans-Canada Highway 9.75 kilometers east of Rogers Pass - watch for green signs indicating the falls. From the parking at the end of the road, the trail descends fairly steeply down to Connaught Creek and ends at the base of the falls in about 500m.Bear Creek Falls is one of the few waterfalls in British Columbia's Glacier National Park which has established, developed access. The falls are found along Connaught Creek where it descends out of a hanging valley flowing down from Rogers Pass to join the Beaver River valley. The falls consist of at least three distinct steps, but because of how the trail approaches the falls and how the falls twist down its gorge, less than half of the overall height of the falls can be seen. The visible portion of the falls drop an estimated 20-25 meters (we have not yet been able to measure the falls due to the blinding spray), but the total drop is closer to 55 meters (about 180 feet) in all.
Connaught Creek drains from a basin covering about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles), and is partially fed by the Rogers and Swiss Glaciers. The entire drainage is situated above the 1,000 meter elevation, and will receive heavy snow pack in the winter months. Stream flow is very consistent and considerably strong in the spring and early summer months, often ejecting such a volume of mist from the falls that getting close to its base becomes difficult due to the blinding spray.This waterfall was originally known as Abbott Falls, a name that dates back to at least 1891 when surveys of the Rogers Pass area were conducted for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The falls are sometimes mislabeled as either Bear Falls or Beaver Falls. Connaught Creek was formerly known as Bear Creek, and when the name of the creek was changed, the name of the falls was not updated in following. Beaver has at times drifted over to the falls from the nearby Beaver River, but this has never been a correct name as far as we have been able to tell.