As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Lake Louise area of Banff National Park is c-r-a-z-y. The parking lots fill up by 8am, and after that you are forced to wait in a long line at a park and ride lot. However, when I say the parking lots fill up by 8am, I mean specifically the parking lots at Lake Louise. If you want to get to Moraine Lake, a smaller lake within the Lake Louise area, but about 14km further into the park, you need to be in the lot closer to 6am. Yikes! And – this time, if you don’t make it to Moraine Lake before the lot fills up, you have to not only drive to the park and ride and wait in line to get on the bus, but when the bus drops you off, you aren’t at Moraine Lake, you are at Lake Louise. So, then you have to stand in another line to get on the bus to Moraine Lake. See, waking up at 5am doesn’t sound so bad anymore, does it?
Anyway, this particular morning, with three tired and grumpy kids in tow, we were in the car and heading to Moraine Lake at the crack of 5:30am. We arrived and found a spot (we took the first spot we came to, I was not willing to take the risk of looking for something closer).
Also, funny story, on the 14km road leading to Moraine Lake, at one point, C pulled over to let some faster traveling cars pass him. I was like “what are you doing!? they could take the last two parking spots!!”. Luckily they didn’t, so we are still happily married 🙂
Moraine Lake Rockpile Trail
As soon as we got to Moraine Lake, we headed straight up the rock pile trail, hardly a trail at all, but basically just a short path that takes you up, yep, you guessed it, a huge pile of rocks. The rock pile sits at one end of the lake, and once we arrived at the top, we got a glimpse of the lake, and finally understood what the fuss was all about.
The color absolutely doesn’t look real, and even with clouds hanging low over the lake and blocking our view of the ring of mountains around it, we were totally wowed.
After staring at the lake a bit, and taking pictures at every conceivable angle, we headed back down the rockpile and started our hike for the morning.
Consolation Lakes Trail
This seemed like a decent hike, pretty flat and just over 3.5 miles round-trip, but it actually ended up being pretty boring. I’m not sure if there were more scenic views we just missed due to the clouds, but we were just basically walking on a flat trail through the woods most of the time. Also, for as many people as there were hanging out at Moraine Lake, this trail was totally deserted, we only passed one couple on our way in (who told us no one was at Consolation Lake, our destination). Since there was a big sign at the start of the trail warning us of bears, and since we did not come prepared with either a bear bell or bear spray, we were a little creeped out by the silence. So, we disturbed our (and a bear’s?) peaceful morning by playing my spotify playlist all the way to Consolation Lake.
One of the most interesting parts of the trail was actually at the beginning, before we got to the woods. The trail started in some scree that looks like it just fell off the mountain (though in reality was probably there for thousands if not millions of years).
The trail finally ended at a huge pile of rocks with a lake laying beyond them. But, before we reached the rocks, we had to maneuver our way past 100 yards or so of super muddy trail. The problem solving and hopping from less muddy spot to less muddy spot actually made this another highlight of the trail (see a pattern? clearly not a super exciting trail).
Once we reached the rock pile, we picked our way through them for a bit, but in the end we didn’t actually get anywhere near Consolation Lake, so that was kind of a bummer.
We stopped for a few minutes to enjoy a snack and relax on the rocks before heading back. As we were sitting, we started to finally get some other hikers on the trail. One young man came prancing past us, hopping from rock to rock to make it to the lake’s edge. I guess that is how you do it. Too bad we were all either 15 years too young or 15 years too old to do it. #familytravel
Our walk back to Moraine Lake was just as uneventful as our walk there (though this time there were a few other people to act as bear bait on the trail, so I left my music off). Once we got back to Moraine Lake, we took one last glimpse of the lake, and then said goodbye to this beautiful yet crowded corner of the Canadian Rockies, as we headed north towards Jasper via the Icefields Parkway.
The Icefields Parkway ended up being my absolute favorite part of the trip, so stay tuned for my next post with all of our adventures.
