Maligne Lake

The weather finally took a turn for the worse and the morning broke gray, wet and cold. The plan was to drive the 30 km to Maligne ("Maleen") Lake, which is a route that is well known for its wildlife. We needed some fortification before heading out into the damp, so we drove into Jasper and plunked ourselves in a coffee shop with internet access.

Clouds continued to close in as we headed up Maligne Canyon. Our first stop was at an overlook on the west side and above Malign Canyon where I caught a nice shot looking back at Jasper and Pyramid Mountain. We bypassed the overlook and gift shop on the east side of the canyon to avoid the tourist crowd and continued on toward Medicine Lake. About halfway there we happened on a 6-point bull elk grazing alongside the road.

The first view of Medicine Lake was spectacular, mostly due to the jagged mountains rising above the lake. And as we stopped to take pictures we noticed a pair of loons fishing in the little bay below us. The lake itself looked rather unspectacular; in fact, it looked mostly empty. We had seen other lakes in the region with low water levels due to drought, but this lake was 40-50 feet below full pool. By happenstance we stopped at an overlook where a sign explained what was going on. Medicine Lake is a very large version of a classic moraine-bed lake. Over the cold winter months liquid water drains out through the rocks at the bottom of the lake, and it's only in the warmer summer months, when the snow and ice melts from the surrounding peaks that the lake fills back up. We heard from a waiter in town that the last of the ice only melted off Maligne Lake in mid-June, so Medicine Lake is only now just starting to fill back up.

While at this stop I got curious about a round object that looked for all the world like a sunken hubcap just offshore. Gi said she had noticed a couple of others further down the lake. This seemed very strange since the hubcaps would had to have flown off the road, down 40 feet of rocky shoreline and then sunk in shallow water where they could still be seen. (The road was pretty straight along this shore, the speed limit is about 40 mph, and there were few bumps or potholes in the road, so there's not much to dislodge so many hubcaps, anyway.) So I scrambled down the steep bank and when I finally got to the water I could see that the object was actually a floating disk of pollen that was slowly spinning on the surface over a fixed point in the lake. There was a light breeze blowing across the water's surface, but the disk didn't dissipate. This pad of pollen was obviously caught in an eddy create by water draining out through the lake bottom quickly enough to create a little whirlpool -- just like water draining out the bottom of a bathtub. It was one of the weirdest things I've seen in a long, long time.

We hadn't gone a quarter mile from the overlook before we came upon a young bighorn sheep trotting down the road toward us. He had obviously taken a dislike to the tourists who stopped up ahead, but he did take the time to wink at Gi as he passed by.

Maligne Lake was beautiful, but it was clear by now that we were going to get rain at some point so I didn't even consider taking one of the tour cruises up the lake. (The far end is surrounded by spectacular peaks and is highly photogenic -- it's also reputedly a great fishing spot, which I believe after spotted half a dozen or so 3-4 lbs. trout cruising just upstream of the bridge that spans the outlet to Maligne River.)

It was drizzling when we got off the bike to look around, but a light rain started about 30 minutes later so we saddled up for the ride back to town. We saw three black bears alongside the road about halfway down the mountain, but I had put the camera into one of the panniers to protect it from the rain. By the time we got back to Maligne Canyon the rain was still light, so we stopped on the eastside of the canyon to see what we had missed, which was the most spectacular part of the canyon. The river has eroded an extremely narrow and deep canyon, which contains multiple large and loud waterfalls. There are several strategically placed bridges that make it easy to view the falls and other interesting parts of the canyon. The canyon is very narrow and shaded, so it probably shouldn't have been much of a surprise to see a small icewall still lingering in a northwest-facing corner of the canyon.



The rain forced us to call it a day early, so we headed to a warm pub for an early dinner. Before retiring for the evening we took a quick ride up the hill past our lodge to see Pyramid Lake. It's also a beautiful place with a private lodge. There appear to be more fish Pyramid than in Patricia Lake, in case I ever get back here to do some fishing.