Moraine Lake — lake
Image by 12019 from Pixabay

Moraine Lake

  • Elevation1,884 m
  • 2 min read
  • 51.322° N 116.186° W

Interesting facts

  • The explorer Samuel Allen first named the Ten Peaks in 1894 simply with the Stoney Nakoda numerals from one to ten.
  • All but three of the ten summits were later renamed after people; Wenkchemna Peak still carries the Stoney word for ten.
  • The tallest of the ten is Deltaform Mountain at 3,424 metres, while the higher Mount Hungabee was left off Allen's list altogether.
  • The lake is fed almost entirely by melting snow and ice, so it only reaches its full level in mid to late June.
  • The lake has never been dammed, drained or otherwise reshaped by people; its shoreline is entirely natural.
  • Its view has served as wallpaper for Windows 7, the Windows 10 login screen and an early Android promotional image.
  • The Royal Canadian Mint issued a two-ounce silver coin bearing a colour image of the lake based on a photograph by Peter McKinnon.
  • From the lake, the Perren Route climbs in eight to twelve hours to the Neil Colgan Hut, the highest permanent structure in Canada.
  • A photograph of Moraine Lake hangs in Joel's Texas home in the video game The Last of Us.

Why it is worth it

Moraine Lake lies at about 1,884 metres in the Valley of the Ten Peaks in Banff National Park, a small lake of some 50 hectares held in a cirque of rock walls and glaciers. Its fame rests on its colour. Fed by meltwater from the Fay Glacier and Larch Creek, the lake fills in early summer with fine rock sediment ground out by the ice, and the suspended particles scatter sunlight so that the water turns an intense, almost opaque blue, which shifts through the season as the melt rises and falls. Above it, the jagged row of the Ten Peaks closes the valley like a wall.

The explorer Walter Wilcox reached the shore in 1899 and named the lake after the great heap of boulders at its northern end, which he took for a glacial moraine damming the water. Geologists now agree that the pile is the debris of rockfalls from the Tower of Babel, the 500-metre quartzite tower just to the south, which Wilcox also named for its outline. It is this rockpile that gives the classic view: a short trail of about 300 metres climbs its top, and from there the whole lake, the forest and the peaks line up in the picture that appeared on the back of the Canadian twenty-dollar note in its 1969 and 1979 issues.

The best time to be here is early in the day, when the lake lies still and the first light catches the summits of the Ten Peaks one by one. Just past the lodge on the shore, a trail climbs into Larch Valley and on towards Sentinel Pass; in the second half of September the larches there turn a brilliant gold, and the valley becomes one of the great autumn sights of the Rockies.

Getting there

Moraine Lake is about 14 km by road from the village of Lake Louise, and Cochrane is the nearest town of any size, some 120 km away. The practical airport is Calgary International Airport (YYC), about 184 km from Lake Louise by the Trans-Canada Highway. The lake road is served by the Parks Canada shuttle from the Lake Louise Park and Ride and by licensed commercial operators.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Alberta 6The Most Beautiful Places in Canada 43The Most Beautiful Lakes in Canada 7The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Canada 15The Most Beautiful Lakes 105The Most Beautiful Water Wonders 429

From the encyclopaedia

Moraine Lake is a snow and glacially fed alpine lake in Banff National Park, 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) outside the village of Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. It is situated in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, at an elevation of approximately 1,884 metres (6,181 ft). The lake has a surface area of 50 hectares.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

51.32250, -116.18556per Wikidata