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WONDROUS WATERFALLS
Helmcken Falls
WHERE: BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
Canada’ s fourth-highest waterfall, Helmcken tumbles 463 feet through a narrow opening in the western precipice of the Murtle Plateau. It’ s an awesome spectacle, with an average of 3,800 cubic feet of water plunging over the top every second, before emptying out into an enormous rocky bowl below.
Helmcken is just one of 41 named cascades inside Wells Gray Provincial Park, nicknamed‘ Canada’ s Waterfall Park’. A combination of lava flows, slow-moving glaciers and ice-age floods shaped its rippling hills and etched its titanic ravines. Wells Gray’ s showstopper was first surveyed in 1913 and is named in honor of John Sebastian Helmcken, a local physician.
While the falls flow all year long, they’ re at their most spectacular in winter, when the spray freezes in mid-air to form a huge‘ ice cone’ that can be as tall as 165 feet. To witness this phenomenon, sign up for a guided snowshoe tour to the site in either January or February.
However, access to the park is easier in the summer months. Visitors can enjoy three hiking trails in the vicinity, including the Brink Trail that leads to Helmcken from Dawson Falls, and the Helmcken Falls Rim Trail that traces the edge of the gorge to overlook the confluence of the Murtle and Clearwater rivers.
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