Beautiful Blue

On a sweltering hot and humid day like today, I'm dreaming of being beside the cool blues, greens and turquoises of the glacial lakes in the Canadian Rockies.

Lake Kinney, in the shadow of Mount Robson

The beautiful colours of the lakes arise from suspended rock flour...billions of tiny particles of rock generated by glacier erosion and dumped into the lakes by meltwater streams. The rock flour floats near the water’s surface, making the lakes appear both opaque and bright at the same time. It's the rock flour’s ability to absorb and reflect certain wavelengths of light that confers the lakes' unique colours: the particles absorb or eliminate much of the blue light, but reflect some blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The water itself eliminates the reds, oranges and yellows, leaving mostly green and some blue light. And that light is what’s available to bounce off the rock flour and out to our eyes. More rock flour means that more blue is absorbed, which results in a greener lake.

Lake Peyto

More of Lake Peyto

Lake Moraine

Lake Louise

Fairmont Chateau Louise on Lake Louise

I thought I would expire walking up the steep path to get that last view of Chateau Louise. Beautiful hotel and what a setting!  I had an amazingly delicious and expensive cheescake on the terrace overlooking the lake after the killer hike.

The last lake in this series is Lake Minnewanka....yes, indeed!....in Banff National Park. Another lung-bursting effort to get to this view, but worth it nonetheless...