Lake Louise & Moraine Lake: Scenic Day Trip with Wildlife Stops

4.90

(146 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

We rolled out of Banff just after breakfast, the van windows fogged a bit from everyone’s coffee. Our guide, Mark, had this habit of pointing out every elk-shaped shadow along the road—I’m still not sure if he was joking half the time. The drive to Lake Louise took about an hour, winding through pine forests that smelled sharp and cold even with the heater on. I kept craning my neck for those first glimpses of blue between the trees. When we finally stepped out by the lake, it was quieter than I expected—just a few voices echoing off the water and that soft crunch of gravel underfoot.

Lake Louise really does have that turquoise color you see in photos, but it’s stranger in person—almost milky, like someone stirred paint into glacier water. We wandered along the shoreline while Mark told us about rock flour (I’d never heard of it), and how Victoria Glacier feeds all this. There were people renting canoes but honestly I just wanted to stand there breathing in that cold air for a minute. At one point I tried to say “Fairview Mountain” in French to impress a couple from Montreal nearby, but they just grinned and switched back to English for my sake.

Moraine Lake was next—maybe twenty minutes further? The road got bumpier and you could see larch trees turning gold up on the slopes. We hiked up the Rockpile Trail (not as steep as it sounds) for that classic view with all ten peaks lined up behind the lake. It’s hard to describe how blue Moraine Lake is without sounding dramatic, so I won’t try. Someone’s dog barked at a chipmunk and broke the silence; everyone laughed. On the way back toward Banff we paused at Morant’s Curve—Mark said sometimes trains pass right as you stop but we weren’t that lucky today. Still, something about those wide valleys sticks with you—I keep thinking about them when I close my eyes at night.