Kootenay National Park

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Kootenay National Park
In Kootenay National Park near Sinclaire Pass
In Kootenay National Park near Sinclaire Pass
Kootenay National Park (Canada)
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Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 0 ″  N , 116 ° 2 ′ 0 ″  W.
Location: British Columbia , Canada
Specialty: High mountains
Next city: Golden
Surface: 1406 km²
Founding: 1920
Visitors: 521,286 (2016/2017)
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The Kootenay National Park ( English Kootenay National Park of Canada , French Parc national du Canada Kootenay ) is a Canadian national park and is located in the southeast of British Columbia . It covers an area of ​​1406 km² of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984 , together with Jasper National Park , Banff National Park and Yoho National Park as part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks . It is bordered by Yoho National Park to the northwest, Banff National Park to the northeast, and Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park to the east . The park is an IUCN Category II ( National Park ) protected area .

geography

The Highway 93 , called the Kootenay Parkway , crosses the park to 94 kilometers in length. The highway reaches the park over the 1651 meter high Vermilion Pass , follows the course of the Vermilion and the Kootenay Rivers and leads over the 1486 meter high Sinclair Pass and through the Iron Gate to Radium Hot Springs . The main valley is bounded in the east by the Mitchell Range , in the west rise the limestone mountains of the Vermilion Range and the Brisco Range and limit the park to the Columbia River . The highest mountain in the park is the 3424 m high Deltaform Mountain , the deepest point in the park is 918 meters.

geology

The mountain ranges in the park area consist of unfolded sedimentary rocks that were formed by erosion from wind, ice and water. The upturned folds , jagged ridges and rounded mountain ridges in the southwestern park area are typical of the western Rocky Mountains.

Due to the park's location on the fault line of the Rocky Mountain Trench , hot springs, the weakly radioactive Radium Hot Springs, emerge in the southwest of the park. The hot springs as well as the Sinclair Canyon and the Redwall Faults in the southwest are significant geological phenomena. Sinclair Canyon has vertical walls colored red by oxidized iron. Sinclair Creek once flowed through the canyon, but has been flowing in a concrete channel below the highway since 1965. The towering cliffs of the Redwall Fault, also colored red by oxidized iron, are the best examples of tectonic breccias within the national parks of the Canadian Rockies.

Ocher paint pot in Kootenay National Park

In the north of the park, cold springs emerge with iron dissolved in the water. These mineral springs, known as paint pots , form puddle-like basins that are colored by brown-red ocher mud. The paint pots are not only geologically interesting, but also of historical and cultural importance due to their use by the First Nations .

The Marble Canyon in the north of the park is an excellent example of a landscape that was created by the forces of erosion by glaciers and rivers. The rock of the canyon consists of limestone and dolomite, which resembles marble due to its white color.

climate

Due to its geographical location, the climate of the park is very different. In the north of the park, the continental watershed has an annual rainfall of 1250 millimeters, in the southwest of the park, in the rain shadow of the Purcell Mountains , only 350 millimeters. In the lower elevations there is a semi-arid climate, while in the north of the park there is a cooler, more humid climate. The average temperature in the valley of the Kootenay River in winter is −7 ° C, the average in July is 22 ° C.

Flora and fauna

The park represents the southwestern region of the Canadian Rockies, a region with different landscapes and ecosystems . Due to the difference in altitude, there are three different ecosystems in the park: Above the tree line at 1,800 meters, the vegetation consists of an alpine tundra, from 1,800 to 1,300 meters above sea level, subalpine meadows and mountain forests are predominant, while the wide, relatively warm and dry main valley of the Kootenay River is almost entirely forested. The forest in the north of the valley consists of a mixed forest of Engelmann spruce and rock mountain fir due to the higher rainfall , while the forests in the southern part of the park consist of Douglas fir . In the south-western region the forest is no longer closed. Yellow pines and fragile ear cacti , a species of opuntia, grow here on sandy areas . Several forest fires destroyed large park areas, for example more than 6,000 hectares in the Vermilion River valley were destroyed by fire in 1926, and in 1968 a fire at Vermilion Pass devastated 2,500 hectares. In 2001 a fire raged on Mount Shank, in 2003 on Tokumm Creek and Verendry Creek. The ecological significance of the forest fires has now been recognized; the 1968 fire at Vermilion Pass is considered to be one of the best-researched forest fires in the Rocky Mountains. Due to the different ecosystems, there are over 990 plant species, numerous large mammals and 195 bird species in the park. Because of the small amounts of snow in the winter living in the southern part of the park all year Elche , Weißwedel- and mule deer , elk and bighorn sheep . Other mammals include grizzly and black bears , wolves , coyotes , pumas , bobcats, and wolverines . Mountain goats are the wildlife symbol of the park, and Mount Wardle has a large population all year round. With the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State , salmon disappeared from the rivers in the park in 1933. In 1983, spawning sockeye salmon was discovered in the Kootenay River, which had migrated upstream from the Koocanusa Reservoir in the US state of Montana .

Kootenay Parkway at the south park entrance

history

The park area has been used as a hunting area by the Ktunaxa ( Kootenay ) and Kinbasket ( Shuswap ) First Nations for 10,000 years . The hot springs of Radium Hot Springs were already known to the indigenous people, and the paint pots were a sacred place for the First Nations, where they extracted dye from the ocher mud for dyeing the fabrics or for war paint. The first white man known by name in the area was the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company George Simpson on his world tour in 1841. From 1912 the construction of the first road from Calgary to Windermere over the Canadian Rocky Mountains was planned. Since the province of British Columbia could not cover the construction costs, an agreement between the province and the federal government was concluded in 1919, in which the federal government took over the construction of the highway. In return, the province made eight kilometers of land on both sides of the road available as a national park. The park was established as Kootenay Dominion Park on April 21, 1920 , and the highway opened in 1923. The name of the park goes back to the Kootenay River that rises in the park . In 1923 the first buildings for the park administration were built at Radium Hot Springs, in the same year the Canadian Pacific Railroad opened the Vermilion River Camp, today's Kootenay Park Lodge. With the National Park Act of 1930, the park was renamed Kootenay National Park. Since 1985 the park has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the Jasper , Banff and Yoho National Parks .

Tourist facilities

The park has two visitor centers at Radium Hot Springs and Kootenay Park Lodge on Vermilion Crossing that are open seasonally. There are four campsites in the park, and there are numerous picnic areas with sanitary facilities along the parkway. More than 200 kilometers of hiking trails lead through the park. The 54-kilometer Rockwall Trail begins at the Paint Pots and leads over the Vermilion Range to Rockwall Pass, before descending back down to the parkway via the Ottertail Trail. The Radium Hot Springs thermal baths are still within the park's boundaries.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kootenay National Park  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. World Heritage Committee , accessed May 9, 2016 .
  2. ↑ World Database on Protected Areas - Kootenay National Park (English)