Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada 8/3/17 – 8/5/17

Posted on August 24, 2017 by Ian

Thursday, August 3 – Saturday, August 5, 2017

Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada

We arrived at the world famous Chateau Lake Louise and were immediately awestruck. What a view. Little did we know it would get even better.

There were a ton of wildfires in BC and one big one just south of Banff. The wind had shifted overnight and the drive to Lake Louise was pretty smoky, obscuring some of the fantastic scenery. Luckily, the wind would shift the next day for our big hike at Moraine Lake, which is getting its own blog post. The first day at Lake Louise, we decided to walk the trail on the water’s edge. This trail is flat and is actually the beginning of the Plain of Six Glaciers trail, but we only took it to the end of the lake and the delta.

People playing with their dogs in the water at the delta

After that short hike (only about 2 miles on flat ground), we drove up to Yoho National Park and saw Emerald Lake, which we WILL be going back to, a beautiful Natural Bridge, and Takakkaw Falls, a 254 meter (833 foot) waterfall. We got the falls in just before the sun set and we headed back to the magnificent Chateau.

On the morning we left Lake Louise (the day after the Moraine Lake hike), we woke up at 5am to get to the boat dock on Lake Louise by 5:30 for a sunrise canoe trip. Court, Doc, and I took a canoe out on the still water and watched the sky get light (it was a bit cloudy) over the Chateau. It was silent, cold, and beautiful.