After our long scenic drive to Banff yesterday (check it out if you missed that post), we spent our first day in the area visiting Lake Louise and the nearby Moraine Lake, two of the most famous and visited lakes in the Canadian Rockies. You can’t actually drive to these lakes, they’re so popular and Lake Louise only has a very small car park (which fills up by 5am for sunrise), and the road to Moraine Lake is blocked to all regular traffic. Instead, you have to pre-book a shuttle and use a park and ride facility that goes from the Lake Louise Ski Resort near the town… or pay large sums of money for one of several organised coach tours which go to the lakes.

Thankfully we managed to secure tickets using the Park’s Canada park and ride shuttle a couple of days prior. I had to get up for 7am a couple of days ago to be online when they were released to bag them but it was worth it.

It’s about an hour drive from where we are staying in Canmore to reach the Lake Louise area and the park and ride, so we got up early and were on the road by 7.45am, to get there in time for our 9am booked shuttle. I was worried that the shuttles were going to be really busy and we’d have to queue for ages, but actually they were really well run and very efficient, and we didn’t wait for more than about 5 mins for any of the 3 shuttles we got during the day.

Lake Louise

Our first stop was to Lake Louise itself, about 20 mins on the coach to get there, but then you’re dropped off right near the lake itself pretty much. The first view of the lake is very busy and crowded, even at that time of the morning (even more so later by the time we left) but you get an amazing view of the lake with the mountain peaks in the background. There were some people canoeing on the lake too, you could rent those at a nearby shack but it was busy and no doubt would have been very expensive.

There was a path which went around the edge of the lake, so you only had to go round a little way to get much clearer views away from all the people who were only there to take a photo and then leave pretty much. It was a really warm and sunny day, so perfect conditions to view this amazing lake.

There’s a large Fairmont hotel right on the lakes edge too which looked like it would be an amazing place to stay.

Lake Agnes hike

We decided to do what we originally expected to be a “moderate” hike from Lake Louise to visit the nearby Lake Agnes. It’s only 3.6km to get there, but it takes you to a small tea house located on the edge of the lake which you can only visit by hiking. There’s no roads to get there!

Most of the staff are university students or high school graduates, who live at the tea house for the summer months before school starts again. The tea house provides staff accommodation in the loft above the kitchen and two rustic cabins behind the tea house. Some of the other staff have to do the walk we did to get to work every day! The staff also have to hike up the fresh supplies two to four times a week. There is also one helicopter supply run a year, which flies in all of the flour, sugar, propane (there’s no electricity) and other dry goods. This usually takes an entire day as it takes 20-30 trips to fly 10 000 pounds of supplies up apparently!

Anyway the walk up was a LOT steeper than we expected, basically an uphill climb the whole way through a forested area – we were getting flashbacks to the Grouse Grind by about half way up! haha.

Mirror Lake

Part way up you pass the small “Mirror Lake” which definitely lived up to its name. Note the large mountain peak in the background, I’ll come back to that in a minute…

The climb continues then going further up, past a nice waterfall actually before finishing with a few flights of wooden steps just for good measure.

Lake Agnes tea house

When you eventually reach the lake itself it’s got some amazing views. On one side you’ve got the lake itself, flanked by snowy mountain peaks. The tea house is right on the shore as well as you can see, it was very popular but only took around 15 mins to queue really.

Looking back towards the way you came, you get some amazing views out across the valley as well.

The Beehive walk

We hung out here for a bit, then because we are sadists we decided to push on to walk the extra little bit round the lake to a point called ‘The Beehive’.

“It’s only an extra 1.6km” we thought….we didn’t realise this was another even steeper hike, going up a load of switchbacks right to the top of one of the peaks! It was the one we’d seen earlier from Mirror Lake!

There were some really nice views from the other side of the lake. That’s the teahouse you can see right at the back in these pics above.

After that it was a very hard climb up, especially after all that climbing to get to Lake Agnes in the first place. we didn’t really realise where this extra walk was going to take us, but the views from the top were amazing. You could look back down on to Lake Louise, which now looked unreal from this height – the water looked ridiculously blue and the Fairmont Hotel was a small speck on the shore now.

You could see small black specks on the lake too which were the people canoeing.

There were also some great views of the mountains, a wooden lookout tower up there and views back down to Lake Agnes too:

After soaking in the views and having a bit of a breather at the top, we started the winding descent back down, pausing to get a drink (Lucy had the ‘Hikers Dream’ peppermint and hibiscus tea, I had a Peach lemonade) and of course, a cake (Apple Crumble actually which was excellent).

By the time we’d walked back down to Lake Louise it was definitely time for lunch, so we sat by the lake in a quiet spot and had our packed lunch and a (alcohol free) beer – there are worse places to have lunch I think you’ll agree?!

Lake Moraine

After lunch we caught the connecting shuttle to Lake Moraine which is about 30 mins away, climbing further upwards – we were glad not to have to hike this long trip!

This was another amazing lake, and a lot quieter and calmer than the more well-known Lake Louise. We didn’t have the energy for another long climbing hike, so we walked along the lake shore to the other end and took various pictures and sat at various points for a bit.

It was about 4pm by the time we went to catch the shuttle back to the car, and about 6pm by the time we got home. Both very tired and worn out.

More updates to come soon, there’s loads to do in the Banff area, it’s going to be a busy few days.

Si