I'd heard a lot of reports about the huge ice build-up at Niagara Falls, and figured I should check it out for myself. This is easy enough to do -- it's just over an hour and a half drive from my home. Yesterday I was lured by the forecast of sunshine and hopped in the car to drive over there.
So much for forecasts -- it remained stubbornly dull and cloudy all day! The odd result of that is that all the pictures I got, although taken in colour, look like old black and white photos that have been hand-retouched with watercolour paints! Unless the sun shines, Niagara Falls in winter is rather monochromatic.
The drive to get there is not scenic. Ninety nonstop minutes of freeways, and most of the way it's got about as many hills as the average pancake. But then how is there a giant waterfall here? Due to a freak of geological development, a sizable portion of southern Ontario is composed of layers of limestone and shale with a harder cap layer of dolostone on top of it. That hard layer is the key to the mystery. Erosion by wind and water eats away at the softer rock underneath at a faster rate, leaving portions of the cap rock protruding into the air until they finally crack off under their own weight.
The result is a lengthy cliff (known for obvious reasons as the Niagara Escarpment) which winds its way from New York State across a fair bit of Ontario, up the Bruce Peninsula, along Manitoulin Island, and finally into upper Michigan. All along this cliff there are waterfalls where rivers and streams flow to the edge and tumble down. And then there's the Niagara River, which really is a strait connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, except that there's this cliff in the way.
Nowadays it takes a really cold, long winter to allow the Falls to build up substantial ice mountains. In the 19th century, these happened almost every year because far more water flowed over the brink. Today, the majority of the river's flow is diverted during the winter season to the hydro electric plants on both sides of the border. When you go to Niagara the falls are still spectacular -- but not nearly as much as if Mother Nature were left to do her own thing without human interference.
The news reports this year often led off with the misleading headline that Niagara Falls had frozen over. Trust the headline writers to get it wrong. The Falls did no such thing. Even the shallower American Falls, which get only about 5-10% of the total flow, kept running -- but the Falls were masked by the huge ice mountains which formed in front of the cascade. These mountains tend to grow on any exposed rock in the lower river in front of the Falls. The American Falls are fronted by a whole slope of rocky debris which has fallen from the crest over the years, and this slope obviously makes the formation of the ice mountains much easier.
Quite a bit of the ice build-up had already disappeared before I got there -- pity I couldn't go in February when it was really covered up!
The mighty Horseshoe Falls never comes remotely close to being hidden from view. The ice mountains form at the base of Terrapin Point on the U.S. side of the river, and also on a single large rock which protrudes from the water closer to the Canadian side. But that's all. The force of water pouring over the Horseshoe Falls carves a deep basin below, deep enough to swallow handily almost all of the rock which cracks away from the crest of the Falls.
If you stand still for a few minutes and look at the Falls, up close, it's easy to slide into a state akin to a hypnotic trance. There's something fascinating about the endless flow of water curving smoothly over the brink and down into the gorge. The deep-throated roar of the Falls is as powerful and elemental a sound as you are ever likely to hear in Nature. With many smaller waterfalls, there's a distinct music to the sound of the water, a music that's endlessly varied. Niagara has only the one deep tone, as fundamental and unchanging as the sound from a 64-foot organ pipe. That unwavering bellow doesn't exactly shake the ground, but it certainly fills the air -- most of all when you approach the edge. This makes perfect sense, although I never remember noticing it on my many previous visits to Niagara. There's a distinct rise to a whole new level of volume as you take the last 5 or 6 steps up to the decorative fence which borders the Canadian end of the Horseshoe Falls.
The chain of parkland on the Canadian side of the river extends for several unbroken miles from the Rainbow Bridge to a point far upstream from the Falls. It's a fine place for a walk with the broad paved walkways, the gardens (not now, obviously), the trees, and then that incredible spectacle playing for continuous showings, 24-7, just over to one side of you. It's no wonder I make that boring, 90-minute freeway drive multiple times a year. I've long since made my way around the many tourist attractions of the city and region, but I never tire of walking through the park along the river, taking in the endlessly engaging spectacle of North America's greatest waterfall (measured by volume of water).
As a footnote, here are a couple of pictures I took at almost the exact same time last year -- just for contrast. That was also a cold winter, but with less snow. The ice mountains took on a very similar shape, but stayed bigger until later in the season. There wasn't nearly as much ice cover on the river below the falls. The fence by the Horseshoe (which was bearing a huge burden of snow this year) displayed a delicate coating of ice -- caused, of course, by the mist rising from the Falls and blowing across the Canadian side whenever the wind shifts to east or southeast. And it really was a sunny day that time -- which makes a big difference too.
