Beaver Chief Falls: Caught in an Ancient Land
Glacier National Park is home to these wending falls. To the Native people’s the area was known as the ‘Shining Mountains’ or ‘Backbone of the World.’ The park is well known for its glaciers, carved valleys and rich vegetation. The glaciers have been around for 10,000 years. It seems where ever there is unique geology there will also an interesting waterfall.
Beaver Chief Falls is 1291 feet from the top of the small mountain it flows from to the lake it ends in. It is a tiered waterfall made up of three single-drops and cascades between. The longest single drop happens to be a respectable 517 feet, a good distance for water to fall.
One could call Beaver Chief a lazy Sunday waterfall. It’s water volume is on the low side at only 50 cubic meters per second, much, much less than the amazing 600,000 cubic feet per second of Boyoma Falls in the Congo. Though Boyoma is at the extreme end of the category being the waterfall with the highest volume in the world. Beaver Chief has the pleasure of being one of over two hundred waterfalls in the area of the park, all of which are fed from creeks and rivers that in turn are fed from a mixture of glacial melt and yearly snow melt.
The park is famous for being the conservator of some of the few glaciers left in North America. Many of the lakes in the park are a blue color from glacial silt in the water and a few of the creeks are a milky white from glacial runoff. There is some conflicting information as to which lake the falls flow into. One website states that the falls are on Lake Ellen Wilson, while the National Park Service site, www.nps.gov, shows the falls as being on Lincoln Lake. The falls are listed as flowing from Lincoln Creek, and prior to 1939 they were called the Lincoln Falls, so it may be more likely that they are on Lincoln Lake. It is also possible that the lake is simply called by more than one name.
The falls are perennial flowing year round. Though it is much higher in volume during the early spring when all the previous winter’s snow is melting.
Another interesting fact is that the falls are also sometimes referred to as the Diamond Falls. When one looks at the falls they can observe a very distinct diamond shape outlined by the water. It seems that the topography of the cliffside that the falls spill down is such that they actually diverge about one third of the way down. The two streams fan out, make a wide angle on each side and return to join again by the last third of the waterfall. It really is and unusual occurrence.
Visitors to the park will be glad to know that the area around the falls won’t be too crowded. It is about a nine mile hike to reach the falls. By the time they are reached one feels truly ensconced in the wilderness.