Blue Canadian Rockies

So we finally made it to Canada. 

A four day workweek, an early Friday morning flight out of Dulles and we were on the ground in Calgary at about noon. Love that two hour time difference going west! We cleared customs and immigration quickly (not difficult to get into Canada) and then hopped in a rental car and started driving. A quick stop for lunch and we were off headed west towards the six Parks Canada National Parks we planned to spend the next five plus days in. 

Lunch was poutine. I mean...what else would it be?

About 60 minutes later straight west along the Trans-Canada Highway, some pretty large mountains started showing up as a continuous wall of jagged peaks ahead of us. Welcome to the Canadian Rocky Mountains!!!! This is what we traveled to western Canada to see and breathe and live for the better part of a week.

Our gateway to the Canadian Rockies was Banff National Park. It was the first Park we would pass through on the way to (in order) Yoho, Kootenay, Jasper, Glacier and Mount Revelstoke National Parks. We spent more time driving and stopping in Banff than any of the other five, including spending a morning and early afternoon shopping and eating (more poutine!!) in the Park's namesake town and making a couple of birdwatching stops at Vermilion Lakes just north of the town.

That drive through that Park! What an introduction to our week! 

I've been to the Rocky Mountains in the United States a few times: 2001, 2011, 2018, 2020, maybe one other year but I don't think so. If I can credibly say that I wasn't that impressed by a mountain range that features 53 peaks of 14,000 feet or more in the state of Colorado alone, that's the statement I'd like to make here. I wasn't that impressed. They are not the Andes or the Alps or even the Bitterroots. I just don't think they look that mountain-y. I even looked back at my pictures that I took in 2020 in Rocky Mountain National Park to be sure and yep...not that impressed. Call me crazy.

But the Canadian Rockies based on our time in Banff and beyond? Now these are some mountains. They are far, far more mountain-y (yes, that's twice with that word). The peaks are sharp; they stand apart from each other much more distinctly; and the slopes are ragged and jagged sometimes and so flat in other locations. They are in fact so flat in some spots that it honestly looks like some giant creature stuck its hands in the planet and pulled a giant chunk of the surface of the earth up into a 45 degree slope and left it there. 

And apparently, I'm right about the whole thing: the Rockies in Canada and the United States are not the same mountains. They were formed at different times in the Earth's history by different tectonic action. Sure they are connected today, but geologically they are completely distinct. That makes them different. And the Canadian Rockies had one other thing that the American Rockies didn't: glaciers. It is the work of glaciers that gives the mountains in Canada their shape and appearance as the slow flows of ice have ripped into the mountains over the millennia that they have worked their magic. 

And they come at you in waves as you drive. More and more and more, sometime made even better and more dramatic by the tunnels that form the wildlife crossings over the highway. The tunnel constricts your view and then frames the mountains beyond as you drive through.

The other thing that made an instant impression on the drive: the water. I can't remember ever being impressed by the color of a river or stream or brook or whatever size body of water you want to pick that's not an ocean. But I'm telling you, the green color of the water running by the side of the road through Banff National Park was otherworldly. It was stunning. And this is from just driving down the highway at 110 or so kilometers per hour. I've never seen anything like it.

Apparently, it's something called rock flour that makes the water that color. The glaciers grind the rock of the mountains beneath them into fine powder that when dissolved or suspended in the rivers prevents the transmission of the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum which are not green and blue. And since all the water running through Banff is pretty much glacial melt, that rock flour makes all the water there strikingly green-blue in color. I swear I will never forget that color.

It is perhaps appropriate that I was instantly fascinated by the color of the water in Banff because the centerpieces of our agenda for that Park were two of the area's most famous mountain lakes: Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. And of course, we were all in!

Here's where things get interesting. There are several ways to access Lake Louise. You can drive close to the lakeshore but apparently that parking lot fills up by sunrise (that would be about 5 a.m. in the summer). You can stay at the ultra-expensive Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise (anything with the word "chateau" in its name has to be ultra-expensive) but that's...well...ultra-expensive. Walking is certainly an option, but definitely not a quick option. Or you can take a shuttle bus run by Parks Canada or a private tour operator. Tickets are limited. 

If you want to take a Parks Canada shuttle, most of the tickets are available mid-Spring (April 16 this year) with the rest being released two days before the date of the shuttle run. We got tickets on the initial release date. I signed on two minutes after the top of the hour and there were about 50,000 people in line ahead of me. It took about 45 minutes to get through that line but I got some tickets for mid-afternoon (NOT when I wanted them). Tickets from Parks Canada are cheap at $8 CAD. Some private operators were charging $125 CAD when we got the but departure point.

And if you want to get to Moraine Lake? Walk or bus. No cars allowed near Moraine Lake. The $8 bus ticket gets you to both Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. Pretty sweet deal if you have the time. We'll talk about that later.

Lake Louise, Banff National Park. Not a great picture looking into the afternoon sun.

I can't tell you how excited I was to visit Lake Louise. This was one of my top sights on my pre-trip must see list. The payoff here was going to be amazing, I just knew it. After we secured our shuttle tickets we debated between going to Moraine Lake or Lake Louise first and ultimately we decided Lake Louise was the one we had to do first. That way, if somehow our afternoon trip went slower than planned, we'd make sure we saw the best one.

What a nightmare! This place was so packed that it was pretty much completely non-enjoyable. Was it beautiful? Well, it could have been. It is admittedly gorgeously sited and framed so well by the mountains and the color of the water is just an amazing dark green. But so many people. It was difficult to move around and to take pictures and just in general enjoy the place. I have a small list of big disappointments that includes Kyoto's Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, most of New Zealand and about the entire city of Rome. Lake Louise is now on that list. We spent maybe 15 minutes there. Maybe.

Moraine Lake, on the other hand? Amazing. So peaceful. Nestled in the mountains with snow on their slopes in late June. Very, very few people. No hotel guests. No people who drove to Lake Louise parking lot. And (and I'm speculating here) no people who only wanted to see Lake Louise and skipped Moraine Lake. It made all the difference. In a big way.

Moraine Lake, Banff National Park. I don't know how many versions of the top photograph I took.

We spent about an hour at Moraine Lake. We walked along the edge of the long and narrow lake almost its entire length in the pine (and other types of trees, I'm sure...) forest. We climbed over rocks and walked over streams feeding the lake. We spent time gazing out over the water and contemplating how amazing the luminous blue layer was that seemed to be on top of the water (these pictures are real and unfiltered; the water is really that color). We slowed down. We didn't have to dodge people or wait for people to move so we could enjoy the view. It was likely the most peaceful experience we had all week. It was just perfect.

And can I say...thank God we did this last. If we had done it first, I know that we would have rushed it so we could have spent more time at Lake Louise. Sometimes decisions that seem unimportant on vacation end up being huge. I would not have wanted to have cut short our time on that lakeshore to get to tourist central over at Lake Louise. We got the beauty of that place along with a sense of calm.

We also got some idea of the power of nature.

There is a giant pile of rocks at the parking lot end of Moraine Lake. You can climb on top of it. We didn't, preferring to parlay our afternoon bus ticket into our walk down the lakeside. The rock pile looks manmade. It's not. It's the result of a centuries-old rock avalanche or maybe several avalanches. The full-size pine tree trunks floating in the water at that same end of the lake are also the result of avalanches over the winter season. It's amazing the destructive force that these avalanches have, whether they be snow or rock sliding down a mountainside all of a sudden. There are signs all over the Canadian Rockies advertising the danger of avalanches. I'd love to see one in person. From a distance obviously. 

So about that time thing...it does take a while to do all this with Parks Canada on the shuttle. We had a bus slot between 3 and 4 p.m. We arrived 10 minutes before 3 but waited 20 minutes for the bus to get there. We hit Lake Louise, realized it wasn't for us and joined the Moraine Lake line at about 3:40 p.m. A trip to Moraine, a nice leisurely walk, back in line for a bus and then arrival back at the bus stop had us getting off the bus at a bit after 6 p.m. All told, about 3 hours and 15 minutes. And that's with 15 minutes maximum at Lake Louise. Not quick.

More Moraine Lake.

Moraine Lake wasn't the last lake we visited in Banff National Park. No sir! We did some others without shuttle buses. There are a string of lakes in the Park on the way to Jasper National Park to the north and west. We stopped by a few on the way back from Jasper including the unbelievable swimming-pool-blue Peyto Lake, which is visible from an overlook after maybe a half mile or three quarters of a mile sometimes steep walk from the nearby parking lot. Peyto Lake is shown below and it really is that color of blue. Before you go explaining away that color as just like a backyard swimming pool, remember some pool bottoms are painted light blue. No paint at Peyto.

I supposed you can walk down to Peyto Lake. I don't know how you do that. I'm sure it's more than a half mile plus from a parking lot. Despite the color of Peyto Lake, Moraine was my favorite Banff lake. We found a connection that was deeper than we got at any other lake on this trip. That walk was definitely my favorite non-strenuous walk of the trip. Who knows....maybe Moraine is the same color as Peyto when viewed from above at a great distance. I don't think I'll ever know and it really doesn't matter to me. Moraine Lake wins Banff National Park for me. That and all those incredible mountains.

Peyto Lake. Banff National Park.

But Banff had one more surprise.

One thing that we didn't see a lot of in Banff National Park was wildlife. We expected a lot of deer and elk all over the place and maybe some bighorn sheep on the mountains or hills and at least one or two bears. On the bear side of things, we definitely had a preference for grizzlies, but heck, we'd settle for black bears. We expected wildlife pretty much like we saw in Yellowstone National Park in 2020 minus the bison. 

We got almost nothing. We saw two deer the day we devoted to exploring the town of Banff and most of the National Park of the same name and, sure, we found about maybe a half dozen bighorn sheep towards the eastern edge of the Park as we cruised down the Highway at about 110 back to Calgary as we exited the Parks but that was it. No mammals really to speak of. That was probably the most disappointing aspect of this whole trip, because it wasn't just in Banff.

But we did see a Clark's nutcracker. It's a bird. And funnily enough, we also saw our first and best sighting of this bird at Moraine Lake.

The Clark's nutcracker is not a new species of bird for us. We saw at least one at Crater Lake in Oregon in 2018 (there's a picture of one on my Crater Lake blog post). It's not a particularly remarkable bird to look at. But we didn't know its story before we visited Canada. And its story is pretty incredible. 

Clark's nutcracker. Appropriately with a nut between its beak.

The Clark's nutcracker lives around a species of tree called the whitebark pine. It's not the only type of tree that the Clark's nutcracker lives near but the opposite is true, meaning the whitebark pine only lives near the Clark's nutcracker. And that's because that bird is pretty much responsible for the entire survival of the whitebark pine.

Here's the story we were told (which totally checks out in an independent fact check courtesy of the United States National Park Service). Like most or all pine trees out there, the whitebark pine's seed are contained within the namesake pine cones that grow all over the tree. When the cones are on the tree, the seeds are viable, but when they fall off the tree, the seeds inside the cones spill out and lose their viability fairly quickly. The cones of the whitebark pine don't open on the tree, just when they fall off, but the Clark's nutcracker has just the right length and strength beak to dig into the cone and grab some seeds. 

The Clark's nutcracker doesn't eat all the seeds it extracts from the whitebark pine's cones. It actually plants some in the ground. Sometimes near the parent tree and sometimes far away. This planting behavior is pretty much the only way new whitebark pines will grow. All because of a loud bird that lives in the forests. 

We didn't learn this story from any sort of display in a museum or signboard at Moraine Lake. We were on a guided hike the day after visiting Banff when we told our guide about our birdwatching hobby and the birds we had seen so far on our trip, including the Clark's nutcracker. In response to that comment, he dropped this story on us which is quite frankly just amazing. Who knew? It helps to talk with people sometimes on vacation. You get the strangest information sometimes. 

Clark's nutcracker. Moraine Lake. I'll never forget that story. I can't wait to pass it on.

Mountains. Rivers. Lakes. Clark's nutcracker. That's our Banff National Park story for 2025. It was both the first and last Parks Canada National Park we set foot in on this trip. Now it's the first one in this blog. 

Yoho next, I'm thinking.

One last look at mountains and pines. Banff National Park.