Kicking Horse River

About

Kicking Horse Canyon, CPR Construction 1881-85. The Kicking Horse River earned its name in 1858 when James Hector, a member of the Palliser Expedition, reported being kicked by his packhorse while exploring its turbulent course through the Canadian Rockies (Source: wikipedia.org). That rugged corridor soon became a transcontinental ambition: between 1881 and 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway threaded its main line through Kicking Horse Pass, descending westward into the Kicking Horse valley and stitching British Columbia to the rest of the young nation (Source: wikipedia.org). The river's deep, glacier-fed valley proved scenic enough to merit protection, and in 1886 it became a defining feature of newly established Yoho National Park, where it still tumbles past peaks, falls, and forest (Source: wikipedia.org). Today the same gradient that once tormented engineers draws a different crowd. The Kicking Horse is celebrated for its Class III–IV rapids, a thundering succession of drops that has made it one of the region's premier whitewater rafting destinations (Source: tourismgolden.com). What a packhorse once recoiled from, modern paddlers now seek out, season after season.