Let’s talk about Moraine Lake.
Everyone Posts “The Shot” from Moraine Lake in Alberta: But How Did The Experience Feel?
This is the first photo that I took when I arrived at Moraine Lake in Banff National Park.
I had arranged a sunrise visit through a local tour company called Radventures that brings in small groups.
We woke up at 3 am. The shuttle would pick us up near our hotel at 4:25 am, and we would arrive at the Moraine Lake parking lot around 5:45 am. The sun would rise at 6:18 am.
Nothing can prepare you for the sight of Moraine Lake for the first time, nothing!
The pictures are always beautiful, but seeing it in person with your own eyes, especially before sunrise, is something that words cannot describe.
But I needed to find a way to describe it and put it into words. My very first thought was: It felt like I was walking into a painting. Then I went a bit further and thought: It was like being in a dream. While both of these are accurate, it wasn’t hitting the mark for me.
After several other thoughts, I landed on the perfect description of what it felt like for me to see Moraine Lake for the first time.
So hear me out!
The walk from the parking lot to the various viewpoints of Moraine Lake is bland, you start at the grey parking lot, its early so the sky is dark and grey, you pass what is known as “the rock pile”, massive piles of rocks on all sides of you, dark grey, ahead of you a trail and more massive rocks – dark grey.
It’s as if you are walking and living in a black and white world.
As we reached the top of the trail to the lookout points, we headed to the farthest left lookout, our view of the lake was still blocked by rocks and trees.
And then, as we approached the viewpoint, the trees thin out, you round a corner and before you are the brightest colours, colours that your eyes aren’t used to seeing.
The turquoise lake, the white snow contrasting the many colours of the mountains, the evergreen trees, a blue sky that is changing colour by the minute, peppered with white clouds that are slowly turning shades of pink as the sun rises behind you.
Now, remember the first time you watched The Wizard of Oz, after the twister carried Dorothy Gale through the storm and dropped her home in some mysterious place. Dorothy, in a black and white world, walks curiously to the door, and she opens it – she enters the multicoloured world of Munchkin Land in the Land of Oz, her eyes can’t believe what she is seeing.
That is exactly what rounding that corner and seeing Moraine Lake for the very first time!
It’s not like me to think this deeply or to get so dramatic, but this, to me, was the only way that I can describe the feeling and the sensation of seeing Moraine Lake for the first time!
Now, if that’s what it felt like for me to see it, having seen photos and videos of it for many years, just imagine what it was like for Walter Wilcox when he first discovered it in 1894, while he was on the summit of Mount Temple.
Wilcox would go on to describe this as the “happiest half-hour of my life”.
Much less dramatic than my take I suppose!
But taking it a step farther, obviously Wilcox did not “discover” the lake, as the land and area had been used by Indigenous people.
Indigenous people, such as the Stoney Nakoda and Blackfoot,have occupied and used the land around Moraine Lake for thousands of years before European explorers arrived.
But neither the indigenous nor Wilcox ever saw The Wizard of Oz, did they??