Last updated on May 20th, 2026
Maligne Lake Road runs along the Maligne River between Medicine and Maligne lakes in Canada’s Jasper National Park. It’s a pretty river, especially where huge boulders unexpectedly sprout from the rapids.
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I particularly like the splash of contrasting color provided by the fireweed, so I work my way through the marshy undergrowth searching for a better angle for my shot.
Once I reach the river’s edge, the ground becomes flatter and drier, with short grasses (like a mini-meadow) between the pines and the water. It’s easy walking and I’m tempted to just follow it and see how far it takes me. I’m especially tempted to continue on when I discover a large pile of very fresh scat. I’m not sure what critter left it, but I’m guessing a moose or an elk or, just maybe, one of the elusive woodland caribou I’ve wanted to see in this part of the park.
While I’m quite sure that what I’m seeing was not left by a bear, I don’t have bear spray with me. I’d really, really like to see a caribou (a moose would be ok too), but there certainly could be bears here. . .
I guess it is a good time to go back to the car.
(I later determined that the scat was left by a moose. I should have walked a little farther and seen if I could get a glimpse of it, since it couldn’t have been very far away.)
Touring by Air and on the Water
Whenever I see rivers like this I always ask if people are free to swim there? If this were in the Philippines, people would be swimming left and right. But I guess it would be too cold there eh?
Ah, yes, Aleah, you have guessed it – these rivers are all freezing cold. That milky color is caused by silt from rock that the glaciers have ground to powder – almost all of the rivers here were ice cold! I do have pictures from another Canadian park that I’ll be posting that will look more familiar to you at least when it comes to people swimming left and right.
We have been to the Maligne River. I think we even purchased a Scat Book from the National parks office at Jasper. :) These photos are really beautiful. We were lucky to see lots of wildlife when we were there in spring 2010. We saw Moose with baby, Deer with twins, black bear, grizzly, caribou, elk, mountain goats, wolf. We were blown away by how beautiful everything was. But as I said before your photos are gorgeous.
Wow! You saw a lot of wildlife. We never did see caribou or any wolves. We saw a LOT of Rocky Mountain sheep though. We also were blown away by how beautiful it was – it was way more beautiful than I had thought possible.