Lake Louise, Alberta Canda

Lake Louise, with Mt Victoria and two glaciers visible and with the Fairmont Hotel standing guard on its shoreline, is one of the most photographed and picturesque scenes in this part of Canada. In an area with breathtaking beauty all around, Lake Louise stands apart from the other landscapes.

Even with the lake still frozen and the clouds only partly lifted to reveal this scene as if through a piece of gauze, people still flock to Lake Louise’s shoreline and hike the small part of it’s trail system not covered with snow. Really a beautiful sight.

Today we drove from Banff to Lake Louise on Canada’s 1A, a scenic drive through the Bow River Valley. Lots of pull outs provide spectacular views of the breathtaking peaks, many of which appear to shoot almost straight into the sky. Some are too steep for the snow to cling to their surface and look like small versions of the top of the Matterhorn: cold & steep granite faces where the only snow showing is the snow that is blown against the steep surface and frozen into the small nooks and crannies that cover the surface of the rock.

It seems that every turn on the 1A reveals another mountain, not in the distance like some scenic roads where you approach a mountain for many miles. Nope, here the mountains are revealed in surprising detail and even more surprising is how close the mountains are to your location.

At one point we stopped at Moose Meadows, hoping to catch a glimpse of these magnificent animals, only to find out that moose sighting are pretty rare these days due to two factors. 

One, moose are big and strong animals whose defense when threatened is to face their adversary head on, not yielding any ground. It’s a sound strategy that has served moose well against bears and wolves however its has disastrous results the last 100 years or so against trains and automobiles. 

The second reason is a parasite that attacks the spleen of deer, elk, and moose, however in moose it is more often fatal than with the other animals.

So moose right along 1A are a rare sight although further back in the valleys, away from the more populated areas (populated being a relative term out here), moose still exist in good numbers.

Lots of elk & deer in the immediate area and the coyote we saw yesterday appeared well fed and in good health. It’s calving season for the elk and visitors are warned to stay back from the elk. Apparently mother elks are a bit cranky/protective just prior to giving birth and every year one or more tourist manages to get themselves trampled while trying, I guess, to get a better photo of these tame appearing beasts that congregate in large numbers close to the campgrounds.

Actually the elk are not very photogenic this time of year. They are starting to shed their winter coats, the males have dropped their antlers and all of them look a bit ‘worn down’ after a long hard winter. In the fall, after a long summer of grazing fresh and plentiful grasses, these animals are simply magnificent. Beautiful coats, muscular bodies and the males have beautiful (and sharp) antlers that seem to defy gravity.

Tomorrow we hope to enjoy the Banff hot springs. Sounds like fun although the advertisement states that they rent towels, lockers and (yuk) bathing suits. I’ll take my own bathing suit , thank you very much…

See Ya!