Wells Gray Provincial Park: Waterfalls and Volcanoes

On July 23rd, we drove trough Canada’s “waterfall park”, Wells Gray Provincial Park. All the waterfalls are kind of different as they vary in height, width and surroundings. The Triple Decker Falls have 3 beautiful cascades, whereas the Spahat Falls plunge down in a steep, high canyon with walls featuring clearly distinguishable lava (basalt) layers. The Dawson Falls and Bailey Chute are rather broad and not as high. The most impressive are Helmcken Falls, Canada’s 4th highest waterfalls, which plunge in a free fall in a large basin.

At Clearwater Lake Café, we had a delicious cake for lunch. From Green Mountain viewing tower, you can see the old volcanoes, now cone-shaped mountains. The landscape is way less rough than between Canmore and Jasper, but rather hilly, covered all over by forests. There’s also a lot of Lichen hanging from the trees, a mixture of algae and fungi and an important food source for caribou.

Another highlight of the day was a black bear mother and her 2 cubs playing on the road. They were so cute! As soon as another car came around the corner, the cubs were hiding in the bushes, so we were lucky we could watch them before. But the mother bear was still easygoing and chomped some grass.