Virginia Falls
Interesting facts
- In 1946 a geologist and his partner agreed to meet near Virginia Falls and leave notes on a familiar tree; the partner never arrived and was never found.
- The "Headless Valley" legend began around 1908, when the headless remains of two Métis prospectors, the brothers Willie and Frank McLeod, were found downriver.
- Downstream place names such as Deadmen Valley, Headless Range and Funeral Range still record the prospectors' grim stories.
- The name Nahanni comes from the Dene Nahʔa Dehé, meaning "river of the land of the Nahʔa people", a mountain people of local oral history.
- In the late 19th century mountain Dene families floated furs downriver in boats up to 20 metres long, sewn from moose hides over spruce frames.
- In the 1960s the French parachutist-explorer Jean Poirel mapped more than 250 caves in the valley, one holding 116 Dall sheep skeletons dated to about 2500 BC.
- Pierre Trudeau toured the region with Poirel in 1972, and the national park reserve around the falls was established that same year.
- The Nahanni aster, a rare flowering plant, is known to grow nowhere in the world except inside this park.
- The last great ice sheet touched only the western and eastern edges of the park, so much of the landscape around the river escaped glaciation.
- In 2007 the Nahanni park was voted one of the Seven Wonders of Canada in a nationwide CBC competition.
Why it is worth it
Deep in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories, the South Nahanni River pours over Virginia Falls, about 96 metres high and roughly twice the height of Niagara. The river splits around a slender spire of resistant rock that stands right on the brink, and the water drops into the gorge below in a heavy plume of mist. The falls average around 259 metres across, with an average flow of about 1,000 cubic metres per second. The Dene name for the falls is Nailicho. The rock spire is called Mason's Rock, after the Canadian canoeist, writer and filmmaker Bill Mason.
The falls are slowly moving upstream. They once stood at the lower end of what is now Fourth Canyon, and over the centuries they have cut their way back through the limestone, leaving that canyon, also called Painted or Five Mile Canyon, behind them. The South Nahanni is an antecedent river, a river older than the mountains it crosses. It held its winding course while the ranges slowly rose around it, so its canyons meander too, with walls that reach about 1,000 metres. Constant spray and sheltering cliffs give the falls a mild microclimate in which boreal orchids grow, among them calypso and several lady's-slippers. Below the falls begin the rapids for which the river is known among paddlers, including Figure Eight, George's Riffle and Lafferty's Riffle.
The falls received their English name in 1928 from Fenley Hunter, a businessman and explorer from Long Island who travelled the river for the Geological Survey of Canada and named the falls after his daughter. The valleys downstream have darker stories. A series of unsolved deaths in the past gave the park area its nickname, "Headless Valley". Nahanni National Park Reserve, which protects the river, was among the first four natural sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978. In 1987 the South Nahanni was designated a Canadian Heritage River.
Getting there
No road reaches the falls. They lie within Nahanni National Park Reserve, about 120 km from the Yukon border, and are reached by floatplane or helicopter, most often from Fort Simpson, about 230 km to the east. The Virginia Falls Water Aerodrome is close to the falls. The nearest airport is at Watson Lake (YQH) in Yukon, about 236 km away, which is also one of the gateways for flights into the park.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Virginia Falls is a waterfall in Nahanni National Park Reserve, Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the South Nahanni River, at an elevation of 500 m (1,600 ft). It is located 120 km (75 mi) from the Yukon border.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
61.60720, -125.73700per Wikidata