Zeballos River Falls

A short way out of Zeballos, I stopped at the Zeballos River to look at a waterfall.

Waterfall in two steps. A small one, as BC falls go.

Look at those rocks.

The Zeballos river is a small stream by mid-summer. In the spring, with the snow melt, it probably comes up near the top of the light-coloured rocks. But look at those rocks again: the darker top section, where mosses and small plants grow, is rounded, smoothed down by centuries of weather, lichens, and burrowing roots. But the lower section is all sharp edges, looking as if it had been chipped off by a rock hammer. As if the river hasn't been working at it very long, in rock years.

(The small, sharp rocks at the bottom of the photo are leftovers from road work.)

I looked up the world database of waterfalls, under BC, Canada. It lists 2465 waterfalls for BC. Of course, it misses most: just along this 42 km. road, I saw dozens of tall waterfalls, pouring down the mountainsides. The database map shows only 3 of them, all unnamed, a distinction shared with 1159 other BC falls.

The database includes the height of some of the falls, going from 840 metres to 1 metre; one of these, the 15th down from the top, is also unnamed. And many named falls have no height registered.

Our local (Campbell River) waterfall, Elk Falls, appears 98th on the list, sorted by height, at 145 metres.