Banff, Alberta was the final stop on our Rocky Mountaineer journey. We had an opportunity to spend time in the town, which is certainly interesting itself, but the best scenery was Lake Louise and Moraine Lake in Banff National Park. After that, we were ready to head to Calgary for our flight home. Here are some photos:
Morning view looking north from our hotel. The Rocky Mountaineer had brought us to Banff late the day before, and after a good night’s sleep and hearty breakfast we were ready to see the sights. We found this view when we came out of the hotel to board our tour bus.Classic view of Lake Louise in Banff National Park. We did not see any wildlife, but the combination of mountains, ice fields, and lake had no problem holding our gaze.Here we are in front of the lake, trying to stay clear of other visitors. Lake Louise is at about 5200 ft above sea level and the weather was a little cool and breezy, so a hat and either a vest or a jacket felt good.Shooting photos while standing on the rock wall seen in the previous image. This additional height let me shoot over the heads of the people. Dorcas was not happy with me clamoring up onto this wall, nor was she pleased when I jumped down, but you do what you have to do to get the shot! I took the first image of Lake Louise (shown above) and the image below from this spot.Why another photo of Lake Louise? I was setting up a historical comparison, so keep reading. This image of Lake Louise looks different from the photos above because the lake area was shadowed by clouds and because I cropped the photo to come close to the view seen in the next image. Like most of my other photos, I took this shot with a Canon R7 digital mirrorless camera equipped with a Canon zoom lens.The previous shot was taken on August 10, 2025, but I shot this rather darker photo from essentially the same spot in June, 1986 with a Nikon SLR film camera and Nikon zoom lens. I recalled this image from my personal photo library and include it here for comparison. There is more snow in this older photo, but it was taken at the start of the summer rather than towards the end of the summer. In fact, it looks like fresh snowfall up along the ridge in the back of the scene. On the other hand, as you compare the two photos, it looks like climate change over the past 39 years may have had some effect on the permanent deep snow fields, but not as much as I would have expected. What do you think?After leaving Lake Louise we traveled to Moraine Lake, also in Banff National Park but about a thousand feet higher in elevation. The lake was ice-free, with clear, turquoise-blue water, and the skies were a little sunnier.Looking into the sun at a rocky slope leading up to a nice overlook (not the square-topped peak in the distance) for Moraine Lake. The trail wound up the left side of the slope, but we decided not to scramble up to the overlook, partly because of time, partly because we are not used to rock-hopping at over 6000 ft elevation, and partly because we did not want to risk a fall. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.We saved the best for last. This is my favorite view of Moraine Lake. I encourage you to double-click and enlarge it on your screen if the web page will let you do that. I shot this photo with my backup camera: the ProCamera app on my iPhone 15 Pro. The clouds, shadows, and sun work to add depth and drama to the image, and I like it so much that I ordered a metal print (metal prints make the colors pop) of this picture for our library wall. Hope you like it, too.
This is the last of our 12 blog posts sharing photos with captions from our Viking Alaska Cruise with its Rocky Mountaineer post-cruise extension. Thank you for taking the time to relive the trip with us! If you go to my blog’s home page, you can find a link to a short personal photo gallery (Electrons are Cheap) and links to a series of blog posts from our Viking Iceland & Norway’s Arctic Explorer cruise in 2024. Enjoy, and stay tuned for Viking West Indies in 2026!
Thanks for sharing!