Cataract Canyon Falls

The waterfalls in Cataract Canyon can now only be seen from the Columbia Icefields Skywalk, which requires paid admission and possibly a shuttle bus ride from the Columbia Icefields Center (its doubtful parking onsite is allowed, there isn't much room any longer).Cataract Canyon is a colloquial name for this section of the Sunwapta River which exhibits a very strange geologic phenomenon. The Athabasca Glacier at one point in time stretched kilometers further down the valley than it presently does. When it retreated it left a substantial amount of morainal debris on top of a bedrock step in the valley floor which is composed of limestone. As the river cut down into the limestone the left a deep canyon with rocky detritus lining the rim of the gorge on either side. About half a kilometer downstream from the beginning of this canyon several waterfalls spring out of the boundary between the morainal material and the bedrock, creating a wall of waterfalls spraying into the river. Because there isn’t enough permanent snow or ice on the mountainside immediately above these waterfalls, our suspicion is that the Sunwapta River itself feeds them where it flows against the end of the moraine at the head of the canyon – part of the river sinking into the rocky substrate and running parallel to the canyon before it emerges at the top of these waterfalls. This feature was previously visible from a roadside pullout, but unfortunately around 2010 a privatized tourist attraction known as the Columbia Icefields Skywalk was constructed in place of the turnout, making it impossible to view the falls without paying the exorbitant ticket price to access the current viewpoint.