Moraine Lake

LakesAlberta,Canada

A half-kilometre of turquoise water in the Canadian Rockies with ten snow-veined peaks crowding the shore — the view Canada once printed on its twenty-dollar note.

September·Peaking now

Sep

Melt slows and the lake stops rising, so the turquoise gives up a little of its August depth, but the high benches above the shore are at their driest of the year. The canoe dock closes around mid-month and mornings start near freezing.

Year-round The Ten Peaks and the rockpile at the outlet stand over the valley every day of the year. The turquoise water lasts only part of it: the lake ices over in winter and the road is gated.

Moraine Lake is a half-kilometre of turquoise water in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, closed in by ten peaks that rise straight from its far shore, and the view from the pile of rock at its outlet is the one Canada once printed on its twenty-dollar note. The colour is real and it has a cause: glaciers above the lake grind rock into a powder so fine that it hangs in the water and scatters blue light, and in July and August, when the melt is strongest, the turquoise is at its deepest. The lake is held in place by that pile of rock, the Rockpile, a natural dam of shattered stone that gave the lake its name; a short, steep scramble to its top delivers the whole sheet of water with the Ten Peaks stacked behind it. The peaks were first numbered one to ten in the language of the Stoney Nakoda, whose valley this is, and the tenth still carries its Stoney name, Wenkchemna, which simply means ten. Most people climb the Rockpile, take the photograph and leave. The lake rewards staying. Red canoes go out from the dock, and from the water the peaks close in on three sides and the colour under the hull looks unreal; the water is glacial, cold enough that nobody swims. A flat path runs about a kilometre and a half from the dock to the head of the lake, past the reflections and into a quiet that the crowd at the outlet never reaches. Above the shore a trail climbs to Larch Valley, high meadows under the peaks where the alpine larches, the one conifer that sheds its needles, turn a vivid gold for roughly two weeks from the middle of September before the needles fall. From mid-July the same meadows flower, paintbrush and arnica among the trees. Since 2023 no private car can drive to the lake; you arrive by shuttle, and the valley has got some of its quiet back.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Private cars have been banned since 2023 — reserve a Parks Canada shuttle, Roam bus or private tour, and book early because launch-day tickets sell out fast.
Sunrise and noon are two different lakes — alpenglow and a mirror-still surface at first light, the deepest turquoise around noon, and you have to pick which one you came for.
For the golden larches of Larch Valley, aim for mid-September to mid-October — a week early and they're still green, a week late and they're bare.
In peak grizzly season, groups of four or more are legally required on the Larch Valley and Consolation Lakes trails, so line up company before those hikes.
Three kilometres over the Tower of Babel rockslide gets you to Consolation Lakes — same valley, ninety metres of climb, and a fraction of the people at the Rockpile.

Things to do

1
Climb the Rockpile for the twenty dollar view
A short but steep scramble up the tumbled stone at the lake's outlet delivers the exact panorama that once appeared on Canada's twenty-dollar note: the whole turquoise sheet below and the Ten Peaks stacked behind it. Be on the little summit platform before the sun clears the ridge and you get the light before anyone else. It reaches the highest peaks first in copper-orange, then slides down the summits into water still enough to hold them upside down. By the time the viewpoint fills, the reflection is usually gone.
2
Paddle out in a red canoe
Push off from the dock in one of the red canoes and glide across water so cold and so blue it hardly looks real. Once you are out past the rockpile everyone photographs from, the Ten Peaks stand over you in one unbroken wall and the shoreline noise drops away.
3
Hike up to Larch Valley for the golden larches
For a few weeks from mid-September the alpine larches above Moraine Lake drop their green and turn a vivid gold, carpeting the high meadows beneath the peaks. The switchbacking climb out of the forest earns you the valley's best-known autumn scene — a rare stand of deciduous conifers blazing before the snow returns.
4
Walk the shore to the head of the lake
A flat path runs about a kilometre and a half from the canoe dock down the length of the lake, and most of the Rockpile crowd never takes it. It crosses boulder fields at the water's edge, then opens a low view straight up at Mount Fay and the ice hanging beneath it. The trail ends on a boardwalk at the head of the lake, where the meltwater stream comes in over gravel.

Nearby

10 km