Maligne Canyon Falls

Within Jasper National Park take the Yellowhead Highway east from the town of Jasper to the Maligne Lake Road and follow it for 6km to the signed parking area. The waterfall is found immediately below the 1st bridge along the trail, not more than a minute from the parking lot.Maligne Canyon represents a geologic oddity not seen elsewhere in the greater Pacific Northwest but is fairly common in the northern Rocky Mountains. Limestone is a prevalent rock in this area, and due to its easily soluble nature Karst Topography – a general term for the presence of sinkholes and underground rivers and passages – is common in the region. What happens at Maligne Canyon is the Maligne River flows out of Medicine Lake, about 15 kilometers upstream as a full size river, but very quickly disappears into seeps in the ground and completely vanishes from the surface not far from the lake for most of the year. The smaller streams that feed the valley below that point rebuild the river by the time it reaches the top of the canyon, so the river is more like a small stream where it enters the gorge. As the river drops down the canyon, however, it intersects the bedrock layers where the underground river flows, and several large underground streams join and greatly amplify the flow. In the 2 kilometer walk from the top to the bottom of the canyon, the river increases in volume tenfold. Maligne Canyon Falls is both the tallest waterfall in the canyon and maybe the best example of the drastically increasing depth of the gorge. The falls chute out of a keyhole slot in the gorge and plunge about 75 feet straight down, almost directly beneath the first bridge over the canyon. Just upstream from the bridge, the canyon is about 40 feet deep, but below the bridge, it is over 130 feet straight down. Just downstream from the bridge, the rim of the canyon narrows to as little as 2 feet wide (less than a meter) in some places. It’s literally narrow enough that if fencing weren’t lining the gorge, you could straddle the canyon (please don’t try this). At the second bridge a short distance downstream, the canyon reaches its maximum depth of 167 feet.