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Friday, 3 October 2014

Elbow Falls after the flood

The top of Elbow Falls, Alberta
This photograph of the beautiful Elbow river above the
falls was taken before the 2013 Alberta floods. The scene
is very different today.
On Tuesday, Monte Christoffersen, and the dog and I went to Elbow Falls. I had been wondering if there was much damage from the recent snowstorm, and Monte had not seen Elbow Falls since he lived here many years ago. I discovered that my camera batteries needed charging, but Monte had his camera with him and sent me the photos for the blog.

I saw little snow-damage other than a couple of bowed young trees. Either the native trees had come through fine, or the snow had been lighter. Signs of the 2013 floods were everywhere, though, from rebuilt sections of roads to changes in the Elbow river channel. The flood had taken out many of the trees pictured here.

The river still flows at the base of the hill in the middle-distance, but the flood stripped earth and trees to form this new flood-plain.
Photo: Monte Christoffersen

The cave at the base of the falls
 This pre-flood photograph evokes memories of days gone by.
Below the falls, the stones of the older flood plain are now larger and much deeper than when this photograph was taken about two years before the flood. The bottom photograph also shows the remains of trees in the large cave that were swept away from above the falls . The smaller cave to the right also contains similar material but is not visible in the photograph below.




The cave on Tuesday
 Larger stones and the remains of dead trees give a much wilder appearance these days.

Surveying the damage

 Coydog Tristan was busy checking out the local smells while I was taking in the view in this shot. I discovered, on this trip, that he barks at cows and horses that get too close. I imagine that he would do the same with bears and moose.

Have a great weekend and I will be back with something from the more distant past on Monday.

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