Lake Bow, Lake Emerald & Takakkaw Falls

We woke up at 6am this morning with the aim of leaving by 6:30am as we would be driving to Bow Lake. Bow Lake is the first stop on the Icefields Parkway and we thought we would do it today to allow us to stop somewhere else when we drove to the Columbia Ice field.

We left at 6:45am later than we had planned and had a drive of over 1 hour to Bow Lake. The traffic was a bit heavier on the freeway and soon enough we had arrived. We arrived close to sunrise and there were pink colours in the sky which was quite beautiful. We parked in the carpark and found the trailhead.

The trail took us around the lake before we walked uphill and could see the waterfall in the distance we were walking towards. There was also a glacier above us and mountains surrounding us. We continued to walk towards the waterfall and realised where we were walking would have once been a glacier. It was quite cold but we stopped for breakfast on a rock where we were slightly sheltered. On the return to the car we stopped at the river which was a beautiful blue and very clear, to take some photos.

We made it to the car and drove towards Yoho National Park, where we were going to stop at Emerald Lake for lunch. We noticed a number of cars had pulled over at a stop so we also stopped. We realised everyone was waiting for the train to appear which was so long that it almost formed a figure 8 going through the mountain tunnels. We decided not to wait for the train so continued on.

We arrived at Emerald Lake which was a beautiful green colour with mountains surrounding the lake. We found a chair on the lake edge and stopped for lunch with a beautiful view in front of us. After lunch we walked to Hamilton Falls which was a 30 minute round trip. As it was the end of summer the waterfall wasn’t that spectacular.

We then got back in the car and drove to Takakkaw Falls. As we turned off the highway it was a really windy road up to the falls which even included a switchback with a very tight u-turn as we headed up the side of the hill. We arrived at the waterfall which was spectacular, and is the second tallest waterfall in Canada with a vertical drop of nearly 400 metres. We spent about half an hour taking photos of the waterfall and the river which was a beautiful crystal blue colour, before we hopped back in the car and drove back towards Banff.Baca lagi