7-8 August: Camped for three nights close to the town of Jasper at the northern part of Jasper National Park, we went for a couple of hikes up onto mountain ridges with extensive views. Although not quite as high or snow-covered as the peaks around Lake Louise, the area we hiked in east of the town of Jasper has plenty of rugged mountain ridges. When we got to the summit of the Sulfur Skyline trail, we had the pleasure of running into Jessica, whom we had met on the trail and hiked with three days previously, in the Lake Louise area. She hiked down with us and we all got a table together at the café at Miette Hot Springs to chat more before heading our separate ways. The hot springs were formed by water percolating deep enough underground to be heated geothermally, then rising through a faulted area to resurface as hot water.
Our next day’s hike began at Maligne Lake and climbed up onto a ridge called Bald Hills. Walking along the narrow crest of the ridge for a while, we had nice views of a green river valley on one side, the beautiful Maligne Lake on the other side, and mountain ridges all around. The interesting thing about Maligne River, as it flows down the valley away from the lake, is that this fairly substantial flow of water disappears into the ground, leaving a dry stream bed for several kilometers before resurfacing in a gorge area downstream. The Maligne River valley is a hanging valley, because during the ice ages the Maligne Glacier was much smaller, and thus did not carve as deeply as the Athabasca Glacier into which it flowed. The gorge was carved into the headwall of this hanging valley as the Maligne River plunges to meet the Athabasca River below.
