Nahanni National Park Reserve

Nahanni National Park was designated as a World Heritage site by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee under the following criteria:

Criterion (vii): The Nahanni River is one of the most spectacular wild rivers in North America, with deep canyons, huge waterfalls, and spectacular karst terrain, cave systems and hot springs. Exposure of geologic and geomorphologic features includes the meanders of ancient rivers, now raised high above present river levels.

Criterion (viii): In Nahanni National Park, there is exceptional representation of on-going geological processes, notably fluvial erosion, tectonic uplift, folding and canyon development, wind erosion, karst and pseudo-karst landforms, and a variety of hot springs. The major geologic and geomorphologic features provide a combination of geological processes that are globally unique.

And everywhere rivulets and streams and rushing rivers, all feeding the restless, prodigious South Nahanni, alive with frenzied rapids and whirlpools, with meanders and braids, crashing over the cataract of Virginia Falls, twice the height of Niagara Falls, cutting for kilometres through canyons 1,000 metres deep, then bending through a tortuous constriction called Hell’s Gate.

Today, remarkably, nothing has changed. The South Nahanni still swirls and crashes, the hot springs steam, the grizzlies prowl. This is a wilderness largely unmodified by humans. Indeed, running water remains the major agent of change. Rivers cut canyons through the Mackenzie Mountains and spread alluvial fans. And since the region escaped glaciation during the last Ice Age, canyon walls remain sharp and deep, neither widened nor smoothed by grinding ice.