Larch Valley and Sentinel Pass

Another of the Lake Louise area quintessential hikes, this one offered views of Moraine Lake, one of the best outlooks of the Valley of the Ten Peaks and traveled through one of the park's finest larch forests. But it is still spring in the mountains and while we didn't have rain on today's hike, we did have snow; the temperature up above Larch Valley was in the upper 30's and we were happy to have wool caps and gloves.

Reached by a twisting 8-mile road from Lake Louise, that's only open June to October, the mountainous panoramas around Moraine Lake, some say, are even more stunning than those at Lake Louise. 

When we hike a trail, since they are mostly straight up, we don't stop to take pictures until we reach our destination and then take pictures on the way back down. So here is our hike in reverse. This is one of the little Minnestimma Lakes at about three miles up the mountain. This lake is still ice covered and you can see Sentinel Pass in the middle of the picture. Since we would have had to cross the snow patches and the report we got from hikers coming down from Sentinel Pass was that the snow fields were very slippery and steep, we decided to make Minnestimma Lake our end point.

View of eight of the Ten Peaks looking back from Minnestimma Lake.

Views to the east and...

the west. Notice that there is no blue sky or sunshine - it was cold.

View of the switchbacks up to Sentinel Pass and some people standing on top of the pass (upper left). Sentinel Pass, at 8,566 feet, is one of the highest maintained passes in the Canadian Rockies. 

Instead of the stupendous views from Sentinel Pass we concentrated on the smaller views of the wildflowers. (quarter at the bottom of the picture for scale)

Truly tiny perfection. (Can you see the quarter?)

No quarter in this field of yellow flowers but notice the small "tree" in the bottom left by the rock.

For one brief moment we saw some blue sky.

You can see Wenkchemna Glacier in the middle right. That's another of the small Minnestimma Lakes.

Flowers alongside the trail on the way down to Larch Valley.

Beginning of the larch trees with some of the Ten Peaks in the background.

There was a small bench at the top of the Valley where we paused to eat a protein bar and...

meet a hoary marmot looking for some lunch.

Another view of the Wenkchemna Glacier from our snack site.

Frederick about to enter the tree-line into the larch forest.

In the Larch Valley we explored this cascade.

Downstream.

The incredibly colored Moraine Lake from the last switchback on the trail. I don't even know what color to call the lake - aquamarine, jade, teal, blue popsicle?

Lakeside.