Volunteer effort on Whistlers’ Mountain eradicating graffiti from glacial erratics  

Volunteers were removing graffiti in Jasper National Park’s high alpine after a Jasper Skytram guest was caught vandalizing rocks and boulders along the Whistlers’ Mountain summit trail.

On Thursday, July 28, a man visiting the Jasper Skytram with his two children was spotted emblazoning the names Zain and Zara with red spray paint on the large, flat surfaces of glacial erratics which scatter the mountain’s summit. After several members of the public approached the man to implore him to stop, they involved Skytram staff, who took photographs of the activity which they then shared with Skytram general manager, Todd Noble.

“I think, from people’s reactions to what he was doing, he realized he’d done something wrong,” Noble said.

While staff monitored from a distance, Noble called Parks Canada. Although the vandal tried to blend into the crowds—even going so far as to duck into the upper terminal’s bathroom to change his clothes—after he disembarked from the tram station, he was headed off by law enforcement. The man, whose children present were under the age of 10, Noble said, is facing charges under the National Parks Act. 

Subsection 10 of the Act, Preservation of Property, states that No person shall remove, deface, damage or destroy any flora or natural objects in a Park except in accordance with a permit.

“Here’s hoping it’s a deeper lesson learned, for his children too,” Noble said.

One week later, the Friends of Jasper National Park were learning a lesson in spray paint removal from quartzite. 

On August 3, sporting yellow vests and hauling a bag of scrub brushes, steel wool and eco-friendly stain remover, a dozen volunteers hiked halfway from the upper terminal to the summit of Whistlers’ Mountain to eradicate the paint from the erratics. Noble, whose staff had already scrubbed and scraped two of the more-prominent illicit scribblings out of the alpine, knew how hard the paint was to remove.

“It takes time to get it off,” he said. “For us it was about one hour to remove one letter.”

There were approximately six large tags and several smaller ones. After catching a rainy 8:09 a.m. flight to the upper terminal, volunteers scrubbed for the better part of the morning to buff out the blight. As far as volunteer gigs go, however, Jasperite Bruce Brown has had worse.

“A free ride up the tram, I’ll take it,” he laughed.

Sarah Butterfield, projects supervisor for the FOJ, said this wasn’t the first time they’ve been asked by Jasper Skytram staff to help improve the alpine. As part of a five year restoration project, in 2018 staff and volunteers removed smaller, less-permanent instances of graffiti. What was revealing, Butterfield said, was the “copycat” phenomenon when it came to vandalizing natural resources.

“After the first person wrote their name, we were finding more graffiti almost daily,” she said.

For that reason, after the July 28 incident, the Friends and the Skytram wanted to eliminate the evidence ASAP.

“Hopefully the clean-up, and the charges laid, helps prevent any future incidents,” she said.

Noble agreed. He said he was pleased the story could have a happy ending.

“In the end it’s a story about how volunteers can come together and give back to the park,” he said.

A court date for the charges is set for September, according to Parks Canada. 

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com