Moraine Lake is one of those picture-perfect places that many people only dream about seeing. Although it is only a couple of hours from where I live, it isn’t that easy to get to as it is usually so busy that you need to arrive by 8am to get in.
In a previous attempt to visit Moraine Lake, I had left the city around 7am and arrived before 9am, only to be turned away at the entrance, as the parking lot was already full. This year, with the world pandemic, it appears to be the perfect opportunity to explore more of my own backyard as many people I know were taking this chance to see Moraine Lake. This time, we left the city at 6:45am and we were parked just after 8:30am and started exploring before 9am. We immediately made our way up to the Rockpile for the stunning views that we had heard about.
We knew that we wanted to try and get up to the Rockpile before all of the crowds came, as it is normally one of the busiest places for views. It didn’t take long to reach the top and I could see how it would get overly crowded up there. The area is small and rocky, so there are only a few places you can stand. We ended up spending about 45 minutes there, but could have easily spent much longer had we been brave enough to climb on some of the rocks. However, because of the limited number of people, that wasn’t really necessary. Had it been a normal summer, I can just imagine how crowded it would be at the top. The area isn’t that big to begin with, so it would have been very difficult to get some good pictures without others blocking your view.
On our way back down, we had the intention of taking the trail to Consolation Lakes. However, we didn’t realize that the trail was extremely rocky, and within 3 minutes of the start, we reached an extremely rocky path that consisted of walking on top of boulders. This wasn’t ideal for one of my friends, so we decided to turn back and just take a walk around the lake instead.
We followed the lakeshore path and took a leisurely walk all the way to the end. The path wasn’t quite what I expected, as it seemed like a less traveled path than I had thought it would be. In reality, it is a very frequently traveled path, but it just wasn’t paved. I was expecting it to be more like Lake Louise where it would be a paved pathway, but this was just a well trekked gravel road.
The views along the path were serene, tranquil and plain beautiful. There were only a few places along the path where you could sit to enjoy the view, but it wasn’t really necessary for us as the entire walk only took about an hour and a half. And this was at a very leisurely pace.
Although Moraine Lake is not big by any means, we ended up spending about 4 hours there in total. I’d love to go back one day to see the sun set across the lake.
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