Helmcken Falls

Helmcken Falls is a 141-metre waterfall on the Murtle River in Wells Gray Provincial Park, where it plunges from the Murtle Plateau into Helmcken Canyon. Its protection helped prompt the park’s creation in 1939. First recorded in 1913 by surveyor Robert Henry Lee, the falls were named for John Sebastian Helmcken, a Hudson’s Bay Company physician and a leading figure in British Columbia’s entry into Confederation in 1871, though he never saw them. The site also reveals the region’s volcanic and glacial past, with lava deposits and later ice-age floods shaping the canyon, and it is now known for dramatic winter ice formations and world-class ice climbing.

British Columbia · Canada