Maligne Canyon and a spot of history

One of the very first walks I went on when I arrived in Jasper, back in March, was at Maligne Canyon. Thanks to steep paths and packed snow, I didn't get terribly far and decided to save it till I had been on a longer walk there. Well, since you need to drive or set aside most of a day to walk to the canyon and back from Jasper, that still hasn't happened. However, I did get to repeat most of the route that I did the first time as part of a more recent tour, and the difference that just a few months have made is remarkable.

                                 

Here, for example, is the waterfall near the top of the trail as it was back in March.

And here is that same waterfall at the end of June. Just a couple of months and an almost 20-degree rise in temperature makes quite a substantial difference.

Not quite the same shot, but the same bit of canyon. It really is a beautiful spot, and I can't wait to get back and finally do the full walk.

               

I'm sure that the lighting and colours in the scenery make a rather large difference, but I think my photography has improved a bit too.

Apparently, the whole canyon used to be a part of the underground karst system that connects a lot of the lakes and rivers in the areas, until a glacier ripped the top off as the ice age started to recede. The result of which is that we get this beautiful bit of scenery, as well as a bit of an idea as to how things look in the various other underground channels.

Something I wasn't quite in time to organise when I arrived, but which I hope I get to try in October/November, is walking along the ice floor of the canyon when it's frozen. It looks like it should be a remarkable experience.

Another feature of the canyon are the chockstones, large boulders that have tumbled into the canyon and stuck there. And whilst it may not be terribly dramatic in winter, in summer it provides what I think may be my favourite photo of the trip so far.

The mist from the waterfall provides the perfect backdrop. This is a truly fantastic place, and I cannot recommend visiting highly enough.

As far as I can tell, Uncle Jack never visited the canyon- I certainly can't find anything in his notes about it, anyway. So instead, this seems to be a good time to provide a bit of extra information about the world he lived in and his travelling arrangments.
So, at this point in Jack's travels, it is 1810. Britain is at war with the French Empire under Napoleon. Humphry Davy has discovered chlorine, through experimentation with a voltaic pile, and Lord Byron has swum the Hellespont. At present, these events are held to be largely unconnected.
In Uncle Jack's home county of Cornwall, Richard Trevithick has been experimenting with high-pressure steam power since 1801 and has constructed a number of functioning locomotives. At the same time, belief in pixies and the like is widespread.
Meanwhile, in Canada, David Thompson has set out to navigate the length of the Columbia River. It is this trip that will eventually lead to him being shown a path through the Athabasca Pass in 1811. This was the expedition upon which they encountered the tracks of what David Thomspon argued was a large bear, but was held by other members of the expedition to be either a Sasquatch or a young mammoth. Legend had it that the area near the head of the pass was home to creatures of unusual size, and it was these that Jack had come to investigate. In the words of the great cartographer himself:

Report from old times had made the head branches of this River, and the 

      Mountains in the vicinity the abode of one, or more, very large animals, 

      to which I never appeared to give credence; for these reports appeared 

      to arise from that fondness for the marvellous so common to mankind: but 

      the sight of the track of that large a beast staggered me, and I often 

      thought of it, yet never could bring myself to believe such an animal 

      existed, but thought it might be the track of some Monster Bear.

Recorded in a posting to the IVBC, 1995 Henry Franzoni, Oregon

To that end, Uncle Jack had brought a remarkable array of equipment. I shan't run through the full list of food and clothing, not least because his record keeping is as haphazard as always, but I think this is a good time to mention some of his most used, and most unusual pieces of monster hunting equipment.

Starting with one that's already been mentioned: the voltaic pile and Luminiferous Array. Bearing in mind that at this point the aether theory of light prevails, here's Uncle Jack's description:

By means of an array of movable arc lamps, lenses and mirrors, it is possible to erect not just a boundary of light rays, but a wide variety of Aetheric Constructions, the light being used to affect the flow of aether in a localised area... The result being akin to that ancient principle of the Magic Circle, but affected by means of Science, it is of great value in dealing with Beings and Forces that dwell more in the Aetheric Realm than in the Material... The great limitation is the need for Voltaic Piles to provide power for the lamps, restricting me to mere minutes of operation. Candles or oil lamps may be substituted if necessary, but the reduction in the flow of light greatly diminishes the strength of the aetheric field.

This is possibly the best example of Uncle Jack's approach to this sort of thing. If a 'normal' magic circle works with candles, then one made with arc lamps (recently invented by Humphry Davy) should be better.

UPDATE: I've found the diagram for the 'luminiferous pentagram'!

On another page in the same box there's mention of 'notes damaged in an accident with an arc lamp', of which I would assume this is one, but Uncle Jack also says that all the results and observations survived. Hopefully, those may include the notes regarding his experiments at the tower, so keep an eye out for those!

Sadly he doesn't describe any of the rest of his equipment in any detail, so I have pieced together the rest of this from situational descriptions and passing mentions:

• The Galvanic Harpoon- This seems to have been a cart or tripod mounted weapon, based on a modified swivel gun. It would seem that Jack added a second iron, along with a pair of electrical cables, each attached to one iron, and to one of the terminals of a set of Leyden jars. The net results being that once the two irons embed themselves in the target, the circuit was completed. Essentially, it was a very early taser- just one that delivered a single, massive shock with a tendency to set things on fire instead of a paralyzing burst. Possibly something to do with why it never caught on. At some point, he seems to have created a shoulder-mounted version as well, but to have limited its use thanks to severe recoil-related bruising.

• Cold-Iron Blunderbuss- A relatively straightforward piece of equipment, this one. Based on the old folklore of iron being inimical to fey creatures, witches and the like, it would seem that Jack fitted a conventional blunderbuss with some sort of replaceable lining allowing him to load it with iron shot instead of lead- and occasionally even stranger projectiles.

• Aetheric Carbine- I honestly don't know how this thing was supposed to work. The idea seems to have been to channel a bright pulse of light (provided by a spark cap and a Leyden jar) through an array of crystal lenses (primarily quartz?) in such a way as to create an 'aetheric pulse', capable of stunning and incapacitating a creature 'in direct proportion to the aetheric sensitivity of the beast in question', whatever that means. It seems to be worth noting that even Jack considered this weapon to be somewhat experimental and unreliable.

• Fulminating Arquebus- This would seem to be Jack's modification of the 1807 scent-bottle lock. As usual, it would appear that he took things a step futher, and developed some kind of fulminate based explosive projectiles. How he made that work I really don't know- the key seems to have been swapping mercury fulminate for some other sort of fulminate. But since he never specifies fulminate of what, exactly, it's a little hard to be sure. Either way, it seems to have had substantial destructive power, and to have been Jack's last resort for when something needed to be killed rather than captured, complete with an array of specialised shells.

Those seem to have been his four most notable pieces of equipment, alongside an array of nets, cages, food and so on- and some rather unusual transportation, which I shall cover in more detail next time. As well as that pyramid I mentioned last time. I haven't forgotten, but decided I should probably cover some of this first.

And so, till next time, here's a tiny wild strawberry: