The Athabaska River is one of four rivers originating in the Columbia Ice Field in the Rocky Mountains. In the late nineteenth century it was an important commercial river now displaced by the railroad. Along with the Peace river it empties into a large delta that bares its name forming an huge delta and wetland for wildlife. Along it's course are the petroleum producing Athabaska oil sands with dunes that are slowly blowing across the landscape buying forests as they move.
—David Foss