Wells Gray Provincial Park

Last week we mananaged to get away to a lakeside cabin just south of Clearwater in the Thompson-Nicola Valley. The weather was good and we spent some days visiting the stunning Wells Gray Provincial Park. This park is packed with interesting volcanic and glacial geological features including many spectacular waterfalls. Helmcken Falls (above) is my favourite. Only 5 minutes walk from the car park, you'd think the viewpoint would be crammed with tourists but the place was virtually empty.

The falls are the third tallest in Canada with a single vertical drop measuring 141m (twice as high as Niagara Falls) and honour British physician John Sebastian Helmcken who after arriving in British Columbia in 1850, worked for the Hudsons Bay Company before helping British Columbia join the Canadian Confederation in 1871.