Mid-morning, Lake Louise. It's minus 1 but sunny and calm. The reflections look amazing. By lunchtime there is a ripple in the water, the reflections disappeared and latecomers missed out.
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| Lake Louise. The glaciers at the end of the lake are 4 km away. |
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| Reflections |
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| Lake Louise Chateau |
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| I was surprised to see a butterfly. |
We then drove a short distance to Field where we watched a train enter and exit the Upper Spiral Tunnel in order to gain height (or lose). There are two spiral tunnels in the system, an upper and a lower, and both can be seen from viewpoints near the highway. It's a fantastic piece of engineering and surveying, based on a system in Switzerland and completed in 1909.
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This is one long train.
The engine (moving from right to left) has emerged from the spiral tunnel on the right before all of the carriages have entered the tunnel on the left. |
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| Emerald River, above the Natural Bridge |
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| Mountain Chipmunk |
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| Emerald Lake |
About 500 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs, there was what is now known as the Cambrian explosion.
Thousands of soft-bodied animal fossils from that period have been found at a site now known as 'Burgess Shale', one of the most significant fossil sites ever found anywhere and an amazing record of early marine life that is still yielding information to the scientists studying the area and the fossils.
We visited Emerald Lake near Field, British Columbia and an information board at the lake points out the location of the Burgess Shale excavations high in the mountain above. If you follow the horizon from right to left, just below the second 'bump' from the right is the site.
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