Banff National Park, AB (Part 3 of 3)
The most beautiful lake we have ever seen
We have to give it to Parks Canada: they were doing their best to encourage visitors to take shuttles and buses to the most popular attractions in the area — Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. Text in the Visitor Guide: “Parking is very limited and finding a parking spot is unlikely.” No minced words here. So when I snagged a couple of tickets for the shuttle bus through the park service’s official website, I felt as if I had won the lottery.
Along with all other tourists, we dutifully parked our van in the Lake Louise Ski Resort’s parking lot, boarded the bus, and sat expectantly, like well-behaved schoolchildren — although not all of us returned the friendly greeting by the bus driver.
Upon first seeing Moraine Lake, we stared, rubbed our eyes, and stared again: could that be real? A turquoise so deep and so blue, it looked like a brilliant jewel. I overheard someone describe it as a “Jolly Rancher” color, which was another way to grasp for an adequate description.
One interesting phenomenon was that the color of the lake looked even more pronounced with sunglasses or captured in a photo. Perhaps it was something to do with the way the light reflecting from Moraine was captured by lenses; the color looked just a tad less “in your face” when viewed with the naked eye. Still, how to describe the beauty of the view, the majesty of the mountains still powdered with snow, the alpine trees that mellowed the rock face, the gently murmuring surface of the brilliant lake?
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We took the connector bus to Lake Louise, and not just for photos of the lake — we had been here before, so we looked at the milky green lake with nonchalance. Our mission was to hike the Agnes Lake to Plain of Six Glaciers Trail (loop, 6.4 miles). According to my trail app, the first half of this trail was colored in dark red, signifying steep inclines with an elevation gain of more than two thousand feet in less than three miles.
The trail was packed with young couples whose energy and ease were envy-inducing; with families encouraging one another; with older hikers who seemed to be pacing themselves carefully. Guess which category we fell into? We were most impressed by the young parents who carried their babies and toddlers like backpacks, some of whom were not challenged enough by the endeavor and so also brought their dogs. Ah, to be young!
Crowds on the trail can sometimes require some careful and diplomatic maneuvering around people. There was this slower couple we kept passing, only to be overtaken by them because N. stopped to snap a photo or two. We tried to be polite and send them a friendly wave every time we passed them, but they ignored us.
Just when we were about to grumble about the incline, the crowd, the heat, the trail opened up to Mirror Lake. According to our experience, calling a lake “Mirror” was like calling an RV park a “Resort”: you never knew what you would get. This Mirror Lake was small and clear, but today it was not living up to its name. We snapped a few pictures by the lake, which had behind it a rounded mountain that did look like a beehive, and moved on.
Soon enough, there appeared a waterfall and a set of steps that led to the Lake Agnes Tea House, a historic remnant from the days in which tea houses were popular rest areas in these parts. From what we could see from the long line of hikers, the place was doing brisk business. We settled in the shade — more important than a pretty view at the moment — and gobbled our peanut butter & jelly sandwiches along with oranges and cherries. Post lunch, because we had been hiking uphill the whole time, N. grumbled about the uphill climb to the pit toilets nearby.
Even though we could see people walking into the lake to cool off — there was even one guy who decided that nothing less than a swim would do — we hiked to the back side of the lake and finally allowed our Grayl water bottle to fulfill its destiny: we dipped its container into the lake, pushed to filter Lake Agnes goodness, and refilled our water bottles for the rest of the hike. Onwards and upwards.
And what unrelenting, merciless, demanding upwards section it was. We could see the switchbacks from the other side of the lake, but the reality of going uphill was so much worse: the trail was rocky, narrow, exposed to the sun. And endless: as soon as we turned into a switchback, looked up and could swear it was the last one, we trudged along a hump and could see that there were five more turns, all uphill. Both N. and I stopped looking up and just started at the rocky ground, putting one foot in front of the other. The one diversion from the relentless uphill was the periodic sound of helicopters above. Once the tree line opened a bit, we realized that they were just flying back and forth, carrying supplies to some remote outpost. I lost count after the 11th pass of it noisy blades above our heads.
We arrived at the top of the Big Beehive to our reward: high up views of Lake Louise whose color from this distance, on this sunny day, was a deep milky green. From the edge of the lake in the southwest corner, where the run off from glaciers finally deposited rock flour into the lake, we could see the gray silt mixing with the lake, making that edge gray until the silt eventually disappeared into the water. From our vantage point, we could see not only the village of Lake Louise, but the Trans Canada Highway, the ski slopes and a good chunk of the mountain ranges in the area.
It was at this time we realized that if we did not begin our descent soon, we would miss the shuttle bus that would take us to our van. We were the hiking Cinderellas trying to get home before our shuttle turned into a pumpkin.
Unfortunately, our enthusiasm wavered as soon as we realized that our descent was not only longer than we had realized, but, especially for N., that just because a trail was called “Plain of Six Glaciers” did not mean that one would actually see six glaciers. Sigh. (So now trail names join the ignominious club along with RV “resorts” and “mirror” lakes.)
The only, well, upside was that the trail was downhill, so gravity was on our side. We used our hiking poles — this time to cushion our joints and prevent slides into gravel — and practically speed-walked down the mountain. Whereas before we had been grumbling about crowds in trails, this particular section was empty, so much so that N. wondered if we were following the correct way down. During yet another discussion about the trail, we both stopped when we heard a loud and deep boom. The only thing we could think of was avalanche — after all, hadn’t we seen enough posted signs warning us that we were in avalanche country? (By now, N. had taken plenty of pictures of mountain sides with their evidence.) We paused for a moment to see if a mountain of snow or rock would fall in our heads. When it didn’t, we continued on our way.
I was keeping an eye on the clock — the last shuttle bus would depart at 7:30 pm — but N. kept getting distracted: there were pictures to be taken, of lakes, mountains, reflections of mountains on lakes, rock faces, rock climbers on rock faces, etc.
We made it back to the next to the last shuttle (actual total hike: 8:38 miles), exhausted but feeling like better human beings for having seen such beauty.
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After such a long day, the only things we could think of were dinner and shower and sleep. Instead, after driving from Lake Louise to our campground in Banff (39 miles and 45 minutes away), I realized that I had left my sandals back in the shuttle bus parking lot. Drat! So at 9:30 pm, we started driving. One small consolation for N. was the he could take sunset pictures while I drove (one of the novelties of this area was that we were so far north that the sun did not set until about 10 pm).
When we got close to the parking lot, to my dread, we saw the road blocked by horse benches. We had driven so far; we were so tired… That’s the only explanation for what we did next: N. got out of the car and moved one of the benches out of the way. Of course we knew we were trespassing; we had just another mile or so to go…
And there it was, another fence. Double Drat! This one was a metal swing fence, about four-feet tall. Surely N. could just get around it or jump it. He got out of the car, looked at the fence, tried to find a gap and trotted back to the van.
“I can’t get through…”
“Why not? You could just hop over.”
“It’s electrified!”
Well, I didn’t like those sandals that much. We drove back to those horse benches, but there was already a car with headlights on, waiting for us. I gulped and was preparing myself to face the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Instead, a lady in her personal sedan, wearing a tank top and a small headset and microphone, said, “Hello…” in that tone that implied, “What the hell are you doing here?”
A jumble of words just came nervously out of my mouth, and even to my ears they sounded lame: “I’m so sorry… It’s just that we were here earlier today and I left my shoes!” She seemed satisfied enough that we were not some miscreants that had been planning to steal buses or camp illegal in the parking lot, and told us to call the guest services for the lost-and-found department.
I drove away quickly before she had second thoughts about her lenience. Hopefully, that was it for my days as an outlaw.
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We rested by doing laundry in town and hanging out by the Vermillion Lakes. N. took more than his fair share of pictures of Mount Rundle.
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Coda to our Banff adventure: on the way out of town, we stopped by Lake Louise to try to find my sandals. We looked at the lost-and-found — it should be renamed “just lost” — with guest services, at the parking lot kiosk, at the Lake Louise Visitor’s Center, and again one last try at the parking lot kiosk — no sandals.
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