Lake Louise Banff National Park Pins and Buttons

Wow! What a difference a month makes. When I visited the Bow Summit in September, the peaks had just received their first dusting of snow. A month later, we hiked through the snow just to get to the lookout, and the snow on the slopes below it made for a perfect spot to have a winter picnic and enjoy the amazing views.

Flashback to late October when Bow Lake was just beginning to freeze. The -13ºC temps that morning made the open water steam like crazy, creating an absolutely stunning scene for golden hour. It was one of those scenes that, for the 1000th time in 2017, made me appreciate how lucky I am to live so close to the mountains.

Elsewhere on Johnson Lake, the ice was thick enough to run across in snowshoes. Here, near the bridge, the water had other plans and had done its best to break free of the ice despite the -20ºC temperatures. Unfortunately, those plans also included inundating one of my boots when I stood in an area that was a bit deeper than I expected. Luckily the car and its heat were closeby!

An idyllic summer morning at Lake Louise, its perfectly calm waters lighting up a brilliant green in the early morning light.

Canada - Banff National Park, Moraine Lake sunset.

When we passed 7,000ft on our way uphill to the Larch Valley, the green pine trees started to give way to the gold of larches. The view of them stretching into the distance with the mountains behind was something else!

MORANTS CURVE - Rocky Mountains Canada , beautiful crisp Fall Day.

MORANTS CURVE - Rocky Mountains Canada Snow, with the cargo train passing by.

I've spent so much time at this lookout, patiently waiting for a train to pass by. On this visit, I got out of the car and could already hear the rumble of the train, so I had to run across the road and vault over the barrier to try to catch it. Luckily, I made it just in time!

I love being out in the mountains under the full moon. The mountain ridges light up in a completely different way than they do during the day and make for quite the otherwordly scene, particularly when the clouds are racing across the sky as fast as they were on this night at Lake Louise!

Even though the moon disappeared behind Mount Fairview, the view across Lake Louise on this night was just unreal. The full moon lit up swirling clouds at the end of the lake as its turquoise waters lapped at the rocks at our feet -- and the best thing was, our group was one of the few to witness it after the daytime crowds disappeared completely at sunset. To get the full effect of the moving clouds, I shot for 3 minutes; hence the faint star trails you can see above.

No matter what time of year, the view from Morant's Curve is stunning, with the mixture of natural (the mountains, the Bow River) and the manmade (the train tracks). The frame of golden aspens in late September just makes it even moreso.

Snow and ice battling to cover the Bow River at Lake Louise in mid-November. It did eventually win in sections of the river, but the Bow was still flowing strong on this day. The thing I noticed most in this scene was how the snow covered the rocks on the island, turning what would have been pristine, flat snow into white blobs all along the riverbank.

A few trees decided it was too hot on this summer's day and decided to go for a bit of swim in the Bow River. In actuality, they were probably taken down by the floods less than a month before.

The trees of Lake Louise are always an amazing sight to see, and by far my favourite time to see them is at night -- when you can look up past the snow-encrusted branches to see the stars glittering above. Add in a moonrise to light up the trees and a halo around said moon and you get a memorable sight indeed.

I went to Morant's Curve early one afternoon looking to capture a timelapse that perhaps featured a train. 45 minutes later, no trains had passed, but in that time, this cloud crossed the entire sky -- just a single streak with hardly a cloud around it. It was truly unbelievable to watch...and very exciting because I managed to capture the entire traversal in my timelapse, which you can watch at https://vimeo.com/202296789.

Winter reflections can't be beaten, partially because of the stunning landscape they reflect, and partially because they are so rare! Luckily this area of Lake Louise often has a small area of open water, and this afternoon in late January was the perfect time to be there.

Lake Louise is often pictured in wide angle, showing off the waters of the lake itself as well as the mountains that tower above it. On this morning in mid-November, though, I felt like the reflection really stole the show. Much of the rest of the lake already had a fine sheen of ice over it, and only this one corner had open water to reflect the snowy peaks of Mount Victoria above. It was a nice last glimpse of the lake, which was shortly after buried in snow and will stay that way until the end of May!

The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise looking like it's part of a (very wintry) fairytale. November really is perfect for photos in the Rockies, with a gorgeous layer of snow over everything except the streams, which still babble over the rocks.