Athabasca Falls

A 24 metre drop with a whole river coming through it

Not a tall waterfall, a heavy one. The drop is 24 metres, the longest single fall of it 20, and the river is 46 metres across at the lip, but the Athabasca runs an average of 113 cubic metres a second through that gap and you feel it in the rock under your boots. The water goes over hard quartzite and works the softer limestone underneath, which is why there is a short gorge below it and a set of potholes drilled into the walls, some of them in an old channel the river has already abandoned. It runs hard even in the fall when the river is at its lowest. Viewing platforms and trails ring it, off Highway 93A in Jasper National Park, and the wet rock outside the railings is exactly as slick as it looks.