Honeymoon Lake to Lake Louise

Honeymoon Lake to Lake Louise
I’m glad we spent the day at Honeymoon Lake to wait out the weather because today the sun finally came out. Indeed there were high siros clouds but you could see the mountain tops. Much better than looking into the fog and cloud layer surrounding the peaks of the mountains around you.
We travelled thru some really great scenery and saw so many waterfalls it was hard to count them. Truly if you had to pick just one place in all of this vacation to have visited it would have to be the Icelands Parkway between Jasper and Banff.
We stopped at the Athabasca Glacier which is always a favorite of mine. This is the one glacier that it is easy to climb up on. But, after all of the warnings about falling into crevaces Bev was not about to walk on the glacier this time. So alas we did not do that but did walk up to the top where you could see people with guides (I think the guide services plant those stories about fatalities just to scare people) and watched as others trudged onto the glacier.
The Athabasca Glacier is fed from the Columbia Icefields which interesting feed glaciers which feed rivers that go to the Atlantic Ocean (the Saskatchewan River), the Arctic Ocean (the Athabascan river to the McKenzie River), and the Pacific Ocean ( the Columbia River). Being some 375 sq Km in size and close to the Great Divide both east and west and north and south it is quite extraordinary for this to occur.
We saw a number of water falls along the way and what is interesting is how the glacial water cuts thru the rock creating deep canyons with steep walls in certain areas and then the rivers seem to flow just slowly and without any effort as they connect a seemingly endless stream off lakes.
The Rockies were originally formed from volcanoes in the pacific and when the Pacific Plate and the North American Plates came together the volcanoes were uplifted and joined North America. Next glaciers carved the mountains into their steep plains and there was some additional sediment formed in the process. Originally the mountains were much higher than today (10 Km higher) .
Another interesting thing was the recession of the glacier (when I fires saw it at about age 5 years I think it was a good Km further to the road than today. It appears that it has been receding since about 1888.
Tomorrow we will visit Moraine Lake and try to hike around Lake Louise. That should wear us out if anything will.
Well it is time for nite-nite now.
Lorne
1 Honeymoon Lake
2 Bridal Falls
3 Rocky Mtns
4 Athabasca Glacier
5 Mistala Cyn