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On my trips through Jasper this is one of the stops I always make, it is a nice place to stop stretch you legs have a snack enjoy the views and even see wildlife.
As you approach the spring site you will quickly notice a rotten egg smell, what you smell at the spring is Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) a poisonous gas that the human nose is very sensitive to.
The level of H2S in the spring water is very low and therefore not dangerous, except for those persons especially sensitive to the gas. if you feel discomfort as you approach the spring, move away.
The presence of H2S tells us that this water was once hot enough and under enough pressure to acquire sulphate from sulphur bearing minerals in the rock here especially iron pyrite (FeS) and anhydrite (CaSO4). The water originated at least 2 kilometres down, probably deeper, where the temperature was above 100C but the pressure was high enough to prevent boiling. The water seems to have moved up along a deep reaching fault (beak in the rock), as the flow of other Rockies hot springs do, to issue from Devonian rock here.
How did this hot water get to the surface? And why is it now cold?
it is believed that the water rose owing to either its own heat-induced buoyancy or by water descending down from a higher elevation down another fault, the two faults connecting at depth.
Near the surface, the hot water seems to have mixed with normal groundwater-quite cool this far north, only about 5C- and lost it's heat. Because the flow is sulphur rich, it is referred to as a mineral spring.
We can thank microbes for the rotten-egg odour and the white filaments in the water. below the surface, Bacteria such as Desulfovibrio remove oxygen from the sulphate producing H2S. When the water flows out into the air, Bacteria such as Beggiatoa and Thiothrix use the H2S in their life cycles, releasing tiny particles of pure yellow sulphur as waste products. The yellow is masked by the white color of the bacteria.
None of these bacteria is harmful to us, nor is the spring water unsafe, but the smell and taste are not most people's cup of (cold) tea. Cold sulphur Spring and it's bacterial colonies represent something rare on our planet: an ecosystem that is not dependant on the sun or it's energy source.
Acknowledgments:
Internet link http://www.earthsciencescanada.com/geovista/PDFs_en/vistas3_css.pdf
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