Our guides Jerry Jober, Roy Richards and Tom Peterson visited the “Tie Camp” up the Whirlpool River, beyond Moab Lake.
Moab Lake itself is not easy to find. South of Mount Edith Cavell, the lake is a five mile drive in from the Old Banff Jasper Highway, 93A. From the parking lot at the lake our guides used mountain bikes to ride for an hour on the Tie Camp road. Now only used by the occasional adventurous local and by Wardens in the event of a forest fire, this road was once the transportation route into and out of the Tie Camp.
Durring the Depression there was limited logging allowed in Jasper National Park. The Tie Camp existed to fabricate railroad ties out of trees cut in the Whirlpool Valley. Long since abandoned, some of the camp can still be identified in a picturesque glade surrounded by rarely visited mountains.
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The view south from the Tie Camp road near the site of the Tie Camp. |
From the site of the camp we look west and upstream to the upper reaches of the Whirlpool River. In the distance, The Great Divide, the very spine of the Canadian Rockies.
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Roy and Tom provide some perspective to the remains of the camp buildings. |
Now silent and decaying, the Tie Camp of the Whilpool River speaks of another time in a setting of incomparable beauty.
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