Takkakaw Falls & Lake Louise

With the aid of our earplugs we both got a fabulous night sleep and woke to snowfall. It definitely feels like Christmas. With much anticipation I ventured into the under-sink cupboards to discover my mousetraps were highly successful, hopefully that chapter in the life of Kevin (film pending) is closed and a bright new mouseless future has begun. 

More to the point we visited Takkakaw Falls in the morning. It’s the 2nd highest waterfall in Canada, but was pretty underwhelming to us. It may be far more impressive in summer or winter when it’s either huge or frozen. Instead we got a thin drizzle of water falling from 350+ meters above our heads which was impressive, but not overly awe inspiring. We did a hike to the Laughing Falls, which I think are aptly named as there isn’t really any actual waterfalls there apart from a relatively high rapid that might have been it, we couldn’t tell. It was a very snowy hike and it’s likeness to Narnia was mentioned several times. Definitely doesn’t feel like October. 

We left here to embark upon the short hour long drive to Lake Louise which we’d heard so much about. Driving up to it you immediately get that this is a real tourist hotspot. There’s vehicle shepherds directing traffic at every intersection and a massive Fairmont hotel directly overlooking the lake. This really annoys me. Not to be an architecture snob, but putting a series of distinctly average, alpine villa’esque blocks, parallel to the Lake seriously diminishes the overall quality of Lake Louise. Any photos you take looking back are dominated by the building which just isn’t right. Despite this there was of course many tourists taking photos of it and selfies in front of it. People are weird.

When you block out the monstrosity (it’s annoying me more and more just thinking about it) the lake is pretty stunning. We did a loop from the main lake, up into the mountains to mirror lake (entirely frozen over so very un-mirror-like), and back to the main lake itself. The good thing about getting away from the lake a bit was we lost the crowds. The views were pretty spectacular as well. As usual a brisk pace was kept throughout. 

The comparison between any lake and Garibaldi/Emerald is going to continue. In my opinion Emerald is far superior to Louise, however the weather was highly favourable on Emerald day, compared to today’s overcast conditions. If the opportunity arises, go to both. 

Home for the evening was the Lake Louise RV park, where we initially parked in a (probably) reserved spot, and later found an appropriate location. The toilet block was wonderfully warm and the showers were actually working when we were told they weren’t, it didn’t matter anyway because we’d both already showered in the camper anyway. There’s a trainline pretty close to us so we’ll give the earplugs a proper testing tonight.