Kakwa Falls

Kakwa Falls is the main attraction of the Kakwa Wildland Provincial Park, which is in the Foothills, 150 kilometres southwest of Grande Prairie. Besides being a place of beauty, it also displays an outcrop of the Cadomin Formation, one of the most prominent ridge and ledge-forming rock deposits in the area.

The Kakwa River, fed by Lake Kakwa, is a tributary of the Smoky River. The falls are formed as the river flows over a large anticline, or folded arch of bedrock. Looking downstream from the lookout at the falls, you can see that the prominent Cadomin Formation forming the falls also forms the lip of the canyon. This demonstrates that the falls has moved slowly upstream as the underlying rock was eroded away.

The distinctive feature of these falls is the degree of undercutting that has taken place. There is a large cave behind the falls formed by water splashing and spraying against the back wall of the falls and eroding it. The boundary, or contact, between the upper resistant layer and lower weak layer is what forms the ceiling of the cave.