Waputik Icefield

The Waputik Icefield is located on the Continental divide in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. It is developed on the heights of the Waputik Range in the Central Main Ranges.

Skiing up the Waputik to Mt Balfour

The icefield is shared by Banff and Yoho National Parks and numerous outlet glaciers extend from the icefield. Runoff from the Waputik Icefield provides water for numerous lakes, streams and rivers including Hector Lake, and the Bow, Kicking Horse and Yoho Rivers. Runoff from the Daly Glacier feeds Takakkaw Falls.

The icefield encompasses 40 km² (15 miles²) and is located 20 km (12 mi) northwest of Lake Louise, on the west side of the Icefields Parkway.

The icefield is easily accessible by mountaineers in both the summer and winter. Both ski trips in the winter and glacier hiking trips in the summer often combine a traverse of this icefield with a trip across the Wapta Icefield directly to the north.

A panoramic photo of the Waputik Icefield taken from the Scott Duncan Hut in 2005

Glaciers

The following glaciers are part of this icefield:

  • Waputik Glacier
  • Diableret Glacier
  • Glacier des Poilus
  • Emerald Glacier
  • Bath Glacier
  • Niles Glacier
  • Balfour Glacier
  • Daly Glacier

Huts

There are two huts operated by the Alpine Club of Canada which are accessible from this icefield:

  • Scott Duncan Hut [1]
  • Balfour Hut [2]
gollark: I guess it's possible that even one which doesn't know about parties might accidentally be biased due to (hypothetically, I don't know if this is true) one party being popular in low-density areas and the other in high-density, or really any other difference in locations.
gollark: You don't actually need simple shapes very badly as long as you have an algorithm which is not likely to be biased.
gollark: Okay, rearrange the states so they're square.
gollark: A simple if slightly inaccurate way would be some kind of binary space partitioning thing, where (pretending the US is a perfect square) you just repeatedly divide it in half (alternatingly vertically/horizontally), but stop dividing a particular subregion when population goes below some target number.
gollark: The more complex the algorithm the more people might try and manipulate it. The obvious* solution is to just split up the country by latitude/longitude grid squares.

See also

References
  1. Scott Duncan Hut
  2. R.J. Ritchie (Balfour) Hut
  • Bivouac.com. "Waputik Icefield". Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2006-07-03.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.