This story originally appeared in the March 1, 2020 edition of The Jasper Local. Some artists paint pictures, some artists write songs and some artists design buildings. And then there is Jasper’s JF Fortin. Fortin sculpts trails out of snow. JF Fortin making a rare daytime appearance on the Jasper ...

Tom Peterson, who was born in Jasper in 1930, amassed a vast knowledge of fur-trading, aboriginal peoples of the area, and the changing relationships between the upper Athabasca River region and the people who lived there. Tom Peterson overlooking the Saskatchewan Glacier. Peterson’s vast knowledge ...

A foot of snow, a broken bike and 9,000 metres of elevation gain couldn’t stop Dean Anderson from completing the first recorded “Everest” challenge on a fat bike. Jasper Local readers might remember Anderson from a similarly audacious assault on Signal Mountain in August, 2019, wherein the St. Alber...

A new film following Red Bull athlete Will Gadd as he seeks out new climbing routes in remote regions of China was a darling of the 2020 Banff Mountain Film Festival, which wrapped up November 8.  The 40-minute documentary features the charismatic Gadd in his element as he on-sights vertical pillars...

Discovered insignia recalls renowned WWII regiment From time to time, events unfold that remind us that Jasper only feels like a bubble. That we are, and have long been, inextricably connected to the wider world. Recently, of course, the event in question has been the COVID-19 pandemic. But on a hik...

Long before Brewster Transportation Canada rebranded itself under the Pursuit umbrella and three years before the Glacier Skywalk was constructed, prominent Rockies naturalist and author Ben Gadd was warning that the deteriorating moraine into which the company has cut their glacier-access road pose...

Jasper’s Jimmy Gillese and his crew at Stellar Descents staked out a little whitewater history July 8 when they made the first ever commercial rafting trip on the Doré River near McBride, B.C.  While local rivers were at full volume last month, lower flows of visitors meant Gillese was able to get h...

After 31 years, Jasper park warden signs off One of the last of the “old wardens” has hung up his Stetson. Three decades ago, when A.L. Horton was a 25-year-old prairie boy looking for a job to compliment his conservation enforcement diploma, the son of a newspaperman from Vegreville, Alberta, didn’...

As one of the original Rockies occupations, alpine guiding has always occupied a small but sturdy foothold in the tourism sector. Part of that resiliency, surely, has to do with the job-site; for men and women wanting to test themselves against the elements—with the counsel of a qualified profession...

First World War veteran Frank Burstrom Sr. was a Park Warden in the early years of Jasper National Park and undisputedly one of the most gifted Nordic skiers who ever called Jasper home. His herculean endurance and effortless glide carried his well-worn skis into deep powder fields, over glittery pa...

SkiMo athlete Peter Knight has rocketed up to number one on the SkiMo circuit in Canada, but although he’s a beast on the skin track, the 30-year-old Edmontonian is arguably even more savage on social media . Knight en route to victory at Marmot’s Revenge in 2018. // Bob Covey Knight has already cha...

Remembering the man and the mountaineer, Ken Wallator Wallator in Maligne Canyon, 1984. // Gadd family archive The stories about former Jasperite Ken Wallator are jaw dropping. Perhaps the most incredible one took place on the limestone cliffs on Cirrus Mountain. Wallator was establishing a new rout...

From the June 15, 2016 Jasper Local Larry Nelles calls instructions during a 2016 course in Jasper. // Bob Covey “Go around there again, put a little lope motion in your body. You might have to over-and-under like that, but see if she can drop her head and pick up that canter.” Larry Nelles is calli...

Jasper in January is heralded as the festival where you can find Jasper “at its most authentic.” While that may simply be a low-key way for Tourism Jasper to say visitors are going to have to share the street parties, ski lifts and music venues with locals, fear not: the Jasperites who are responsib...

It’s hard to think of spending the night in a tent when it’s minus 45 degrees Celsius outside, but if you want to camp in Canada’s mountain parks this summer, that’s exactly what you were doing earlier this month. At least that’s what you had hoped you’d be doing: online camping reservations opened ...

Cyril Geoffrey Wates (1883-1946) was a composer, choirmaster, science fiction writer and photographer. Cyril Geoffrey wates in 1922 // Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives He was also an inventor, an astronomer and an engineer. Not long after he constructed what was, at the time, the largest telesc...

A bison bone found high in the alpine near Maligne Lake is opening doors of discovery for paleo-environmental researchers in Jasper National Park. In 2016, Parks Canada historians surveying an ice patch near the headwaters of Trapper Creek were surprised to find what looked to be a bison humerus mel...

Photos by Danny Peled, Boreal River Rescue Several years ago, while spending time at the family cottage in Ontario, Jamie Orfald-Clarke and his parents went for a skate on the frozen lake. It was mid-winter. Based on how cold it had been, plus their history of enjoying countless similar skating sess...

Jasper’s Ailsa Ross has a rule: no screens before she gets outside in the morning. That means no logging into social media, no checking her phone, no firing up the laptop. Instead, she’ll head out for a walk around Cabin Creek. Or a quick bike ride. The important thing is that she doesn’t waste the ...

There aren’t many photos of the Stanko boys from their childhood in Jasper. The ones that do exist look as though the photographer had a hard time getting the three brothers to stand still long enough for a snap. “We were always on the go,” youngest brother Ron Stanko, now 60-years-old, remembered. ...