Six Glaciers

I went up a mountain.

Marc and I traded in the glamour of a brunch restaurant in Banff for a sunlit wildflower meadow on the shores of Lake Louise. It was the most beautiful location I have ever been for a picnic. We ate blueberry scones and watched the breeze on the water. You can hire yellow canoes to go out onto the lake and the people paddled away on a surface that looked like ruffled glass.

The Plains of the Six Glaciers is arguably the most famous hike in the Canadian Rockies. All in, it’s over a 14 kilometre hike, but less than half that just going to the Tea House and back. Starting from the Chateau Fairmont at the lake shore it follows a lake path and then winds past horse trails up into the mountains. Near the top of the tree line is a very old, beautiful Tea House. It’s the perfect walk for older couples with a classy hot chocolate at each end of the round trip.

Outside the tea house was this pile of scree (rubble path) almost directly vertical up into the mountains. Marc seriously contemplated trying to get me to go up it, and even with him carrying the ‘top of the mountain’ beers he had packed for the hike.
The true path lead us past the glacial river bed, new wildflowers and up past the tree line. The wind picked up and the other company on the trail grew less as the afternoon got late. The sun sets fast in the mountains. They great grey Rockies have a strange effect on a person. You have a sense of tremendous possibility yet are so minute. The Rockies are awesomely overwhelming.

It was the furthest I went on my own feet up into the mountains and it was an experience of indescribable beauty, all civilisation removed.