We were hiking up the trail from the end of Lake Louise when we were passed by three serious women hikers. You can see two of them in the first photo. We said polite “Hi’s” when they passed us but we soon caught up to them. They were sitting besides the trail putting on their ‘gaiters’. We stopped to chat and I couldn’t figure out where in the heck they were hiking with such huge backpacks, so I asked them. They told us that they worked at the 6G Tea House and they were hauling up supplies. They said it was normally done by horses but that the trail was closed to horses. We asked about the gaiters and they said we would need them as the snow was deep ahead. We didn’t have any gaiters, but that proved to be the least of our worries.

You can see in the second photo that only a short ways further, we were in the snow. What amazed us about this was the color of the snow. The deep blue color is from glacial ice that has been compacted over long periods of time and the weight has squeezed the air out of the ice. It seemed out of place to us, but we soon found out why not.

The trail continued to rise sharply and you can see a much better view of the Victoria Glacier in the third photo.

The trail soon became almost all snow and ice as you can see in the last photo. But of course, we were still smiling and enjoying every minute of the hike. It was a great day with a great temperature and beautiful views in every direction including Lake Louise down behind us. What could be better?