The turquoise is rock ground to flour, hanging in the water and throwing back light
Less than a square kilometre of water, 70 metres deep at its deepest, and probably the most photographed thing in Canada. The colour is not a filter and it is not dissolved copper: glaciers above the lake grind rock into flour, the meltwater carries that flour down, and the particles are fine enough to stay suspended and scatter light back as turquoise. Take the glaciers away and the colour goes with them. The Stoney Nakoda called it Ho-run-num-nay, the lake of the little fishes, which is a better name. The Canadian Pacific Railway built the chateau on the eastern shore in the early decades of the twentieth century and the view down the lake from in front of it is the one on the postcards. Go early or go late: the car park is the limiting factor on the whole valley, and the shoreline trail is a different place with nobody on it.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
