Kayak Alberta

Whirlpool

Name: Whirlpool River

Section: Horse Coral to Highway 93A bridge

How to Get there:

Once you have arrived in Jasper make your way to Athabasca falls. From the falls go north on 93A, you will go over the river once and then you will take a Left onto “Mob Lake Road”. Take this road for about 10 minutes (You will get a few glimpses of the river and what hit has to offer, not to much scouting is involved though) until you see some old horses corals on the I believe right hand side of the road. There is a small path leading to the river through the bushes that will take you to your drop-in spot. Enjoy.

What to Expect:

Not to many people have heard about the Whirlpool unless you spend a lot of time in Jasper. Kayakalberta was fortunate to read up on it and heard a lot of good things about it enough to checked it out ourselves – The river did not let us down. Whirlpool is not a large volume river like Athabasca but it does push quite a bit of water along at fast pace. The river offers a continuous ride with class II+ drops and a lot of Class II rapids. The river mainly follows beside the gravel road called “Moab Lake Road” before it separates, flows under highway 93A, and eventually meets up with Athabasca River. Whirlpool is definitely a fun river with lots of whitewater rapids to run the whole time.

You can add some more class 3 rapids to your trip and a class 4 feature as well. You have to hike about 4 km along the moab athabasca pass path. You hike along this until you can toss a rock into the river from the path.