Why the Internet Became Obsessed With This Canadian Lake | S1E42

The internet seems to love this color and it has become one of the most photographed lakes in the world. My journey begins at North America's most northern drivable point. The plan is to ride through Canada and America before crossing over to Europe. From there, I'll make my way across Asia and down to Australia. New Zealand's southern most drivable point will mark the end of my journey. I'm calling it the big spiral and this is act three across North America. Good morning. So today, we're going full tourist. Let me show you on the map the exact plan for today. So this is my map of British Columbia and in the last video, I finished in Golden. So I wanna head east into the National Park and actually, they just finished building a brand new highway here and they built a crazy massive bridge in here. So I wanna go check out that bridge and then over by Lake Louise. It's not Lake Louise, but it's the most photographed lake in the world. I wanna go check that out. It's a very beautiful lake, very famous. And then in the last video, you saw I went to visit the Columbia Glacier, but I saw it from the BC side. Well, now I'm going full tourist and I'm not sure if it's open or not, but I wanna see if I can see that glacier from the Alberta side, from the National Park side. And then after, I'm gonna head back south a little bit and leave the National Park and I'll probably camp somewhere over in here in Alberta. So it should be a very interesting, beautiful day, but it's definitely gonna be like the tourist day. So I'm kind of excited, but I'm also a little bit afraid of all the people. So we'll see how it goes. I have a shuttle booked for the most photographed lake and yeah, I need to get there on time. So let's get going. All right, so first thing, oh, I can't go this way. Well, yeah, look at this steep bit. All right, so this highway, I think it got finished last year, but before that it was closed for quite a while and the detour is pretty substantial, but it turned out they've been building some pretty amazing stuff in there. If you watched my last video, you'll know how steep and prominent the mountains are here, even if you look there, very steep. And so building a highway through it is definitely an engineering feat. They made it four lanes, so two lanes each way, and they had to build some crazy bridges in there to do it. So I want to go check out those bridges today. And I think the first one is four minutes away. It's called Sheep Bridge, apparently. And it's just kind of precariously hanging off the cliff or that's at least how it looks. But I can really smell breaks in there. People have been coming down the hill, not downshifting and using the brakes and oh, it's pretty stinky. Whenever I smell something, I'm like, is that me? Is that my bike? What's going on? Four lane upgrade, Kamloops, Alberta. So this canyon is called Kicking Horse Canyon. The mountain behind us, maybe you can see in my mirror, is Kicking Horse Mountain. And yeah, they definitely built a hell of a thing here. So this is apparently Sheep Bridge. You can see it's pretty much hanging off a cliff here. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. The whole thing is just elevated off the ground. Like they didn't even build it on the rock, on the surface. It's just like one giant overpass. Apparently it opened November of last year and it cost $601 million to do this upgrade. Oh, wow. Look at that bridge. So this one's called the Park Bridge and I can't even see the bottom. It's really high. The funny thing is you cross the bridge and you have no idea how high you are. It's just another highway. Now they cut out a big section of rock. The rafting companies must love it because it's so easy to get up the river now. It's part of the world. They have these wildlife overpasses and they only exist to allow wildlife to cross the highway. Now, if you remember many videos ago, I saw that bobcat and she had three kittens with her. And two followed her across the highway and one did not want to go across. So it is a problem for a lot of these animals is that for one, the kitten didn't want to cross the highway but two, a lot of animals, when they do cross the highway, they could easily get hit. Yeah, I think as humans, as we put up these obstacles for the animals, we also have a responsibility to make their life a little bit easier. Like, the animals have no use for this highway, that's for sure. Oh, it's a big mountain. It's a really big mountain. Another one of these wildlife overpasses. This one's really big. It's built way bigger than an overpass for cars. Lake Louise. I'm gonna head to the shuttle pickup point and they'll drive me to the lake, I believe. Shuttle to lakes, left. Yeah, last time I visited, you could drive right to the lake. Wow. This is why you have shuttles because, oh my God, look at that. Here we go. Popular place. I guess I'll go park with them. Motorcycle parking, just for me. Someone with good taste here. Hello. I booked online this morning for one or two. Thank you very much. There you go. Use the bus for Moraine, it's behind on the right. Okay, sweet, thank you. Well, this is turning into a bit of a mission just to see a lake, but it's a very popular lake. Oh, I think the bus is here. Shall we get on? Well, why not? Okay. I believe it'll be a little cooler in here than it is out there. All right, do you need that? Moraine Lake. That's where I wanna go? You hang on to that. That's your credit card for the entire day. Maybe we'll see you later. Well, that was definitely a whole rigmarole to get out here. Last time I could just drive, but it is a very popular place, so let's have a look. Wait, keep it. Mine's got... Crazy. So the color of the lake has to do with the glacier that is above it. And although you can't really see the glacier anymore, it leaves a glacial till. So if you think about like when you're a kid, maybe you had a rock polisher and the rocks are just tumbling and tumbling and tumbling in there with water. Basically little fragments or particles of the rock is getting turned into bits of sand or silt. And that all gets washed into the lake. Now, if you look at the end of the lake, you can see these big piles of gravel. And that basically comes from the glacier breaking up the rock and pushing gravel down lower. So even though that glacial till is all kind of gray, when it gets mixed in with the water, it does a better job of reflecting green and blue light. Now I've heard people refer to this mixture as glacial milk, which all sounds a bit funny, but it often is like a very lighter white color. Now the sad thing about it is that as the glaciers reduce, they're generating less till, which means there's less of this mixture going into the water. And the lakes are actually changing color. Some lakes used to be a really bright turquoise blue, and now they're going down more into like an emerald green, which is still beautiful, but it's changing. But anyways, the internet seems to love this color. And Moraine Lake has become one of the most photographed lakes in the world. But as a result of its popularity online, it's really busy here now. And it's a reason why you have to take a shuttle in now instead of just driving in. But enough about this beautiful lake. I want to head over to the Columbia Ice Field. In my last video, I saw it from the BC side, and now I want to see it from the Alberta side or the National Park side. Let's cross our fingers and hope it's open. All right, we're off again. Let's get to the Columbia Ice Field. I'm not sure if it closes or if it's even open, but it might close at five. I hope the glacier of all things does not close at five o'clock. I must buy a pass. Good, how are you? I'm good. Is the Columbia Glacier open? Okay, I'd like to see that if that's cool. Totally, it's about an hour and a half down the road. Yeah. It's $11 per day pass. I had a horrible habit of putting tape on it because I'm just so used to it. Oh yeah. Yeah, I was like, do I put it on my windshield or? No, just don't tape it, just keep it in your pocket there. Okay, cool. Thank you, have a great day. Thank you, you too. All right, great success. All right, she said the glacier's open. So I'm quite happy to be driving this highway because the last time I wanted to do it, it was filled with smoke. And as we saw in the last video, every year BC's burning and yeah, there's always smoke in the mountains. I should say this highway is really, really famous. Like basically, if you come to Canada and you're a tourist, you're gonna go to Banff and then you're gonna go to Lake Louise and Lake Moraine and then you're gonna drive up this highway and then you're gonna go to Jasper. It's basically the thing to do if you're coming to Canada as a tourist. And you know, since I live here, you kind of take it for granted a little bit because you kind of grew up with it. Like when I was a kid, our family, we'd often go to Alberta and this was basically on the way. So you're just kind of like, oh yeah, mountains. But as you travel the world, you start to realize how special these mountains are. Like you can't just get these mountains anywhere. But yeah, like look at these mountains. Like it's just crazy, crazy beautiful. Well, there's the ice field. You know, this side might be more impressive. Oh yeah, there's actually, there's the big one there. Oh wow. Wow. Look, it's just sliding down. It's really impressive. It's very majestic, I have to say. Wow, it's so big. All right, let's go for a little walk to the toe of the Columbia glacier. It's pretty windy actually right now. And someone in the parking lot was asking me, he was wearing a t-shirt, he's like, do you know if it's cold up there? I'm like, yeah, probably with the ice and the wind. So I just read a sign that says glaciers create their own weather. Basically the way it works is it cools the air and cold air is denser and heavier. So it's falling down the hill, so it creates the wind, but it's a pretty effective force actually. Oh, this is interesting. The glacier was here in 1982. So that's actually the year I was born. So I'm going to record my walk and we'll see how far the glaciers receded since I was born. So there's a sign for 1992 and so far I've walked 150 meters. Another thing I want to talk about is all the smooth rock here. The glacier basically did that. So as it moved over the surface, it's basically grinding up these rocks with other rocks. So remember that glacial milk I mentioned earlier? Well, basically it acts like a slurry and it just starts polishing everything up really smooth. And this stuff would have acted as kind of an abrasive, almost like sandpaper, and that would have helped smooth it all out as the ice is forcing it over. And you can even see the direction the glacier was going. You can see all the lines in there. So there's a glacier now, but in 1844, it actually was all the way at the building there, the ice field center. Then even 10,000 years ago, apparently the glacier extended all the way into the prairies of Alberta. So basically it must have been the ice age at that point. So it's pretty amazing. Definitely fortunate to be alive to see this because I think, oh, they're doing ice fields. There's buses up on there. Is that a truck driving on the glacier? That's gotta be the most, I was gonna say the most American thing ever, but it's, this is Canada. Yeah, I guess you can do tours and walk on the glacier. So that's pretty cool. So apparently we can only go this far, apparently related to the wildfire, which is unfortunate. Glacier's just over there. 2006. So basically that's in 24 years, it receded about 400 meters. But anyways, I gotta head back to the bike and go find some spot to camp. All right. It was, I always love that moment when you first see something. Oh, there's signs here. 1948. Oh, it was already all the way here in 1942. I miss these on the way out. World War II, the glacier was here. And 1935. Oh, I was looking at the glacier, that's how I missed them. So that's 1925. Wow, it's receded a lot, hasn't it? 1908. So all these piles of, basically these are, oh, I wanna say tailings, but that's a mining term. But basically this is all the stuff that the glacier dropped off. And usually this happens when a glacier stays in one spot for a long time. Cause it, basically it's moving material down the mountain all the time, it's dragging it out. And when it melts, it just leaves, you know, like if you melted an ice cube with a rock in it, the rock would stay behind. So yeah, so around 1908, I guess it was somewhat stable. All right, so here's 1890. So there's a big jump between those two spots then. And then, yeah, you can even see more piles over there. So it must've been stable at that point too. So, oh yeah, big ones over there. Anyways, yeah, I gotta head back down the highway and then I gotta turn left into Alberta. And then I'm gonna head back to the highway 40 or the Bighorn Highway. And that was the highway I was originally gonna take, but then I lost my license plate. Ended up in Vailmont, did a big detour through BC. I think it was all for the best after all, but anyhow, I'll see you at the campsite. Wow, right on the water. Maybe this'll do. Well, well, I've helped perpetuate the trope that Lake Moraine is one of the most photographed lakes in the world by photographing it a little more. A little bit of a mission to get to it. You gotta take a bus twice and, oh man, there's so many people there, it's crazy. I think I prefer just being out on my own in the middle of nowhere with nobody around. But sometimes you gotta go and do the touristy thing, I think, so. And it was cool to see the new highway. I've heard a lot of people moaning about having to do the detour around that because it actually adds a couple hours to do the detour when they were building that. And a lot of times you just don't really know what you're driving on until you get the drone up and then you're like, wow, they put a lot of effort into this, so. Yeah, and it's, maybe the old road was a little more interesting because it was just more winding and stuff, but I'm sure it was quite a bit more dangerous and a lot slower. And that Columbia Ice Field, that is so cool. I wish I could've seen it in the early 1900s. Like, it would've been all the way down to the road. It just would've been wild. But yeah, that's, you know, it's been receding. Apparently it's been receding for like 10,000 years, so. But I think in recent years it's accelerating. I saw on a sign it was like five meters a year it's receding, so. Yeah, it's somewhat unfortunate. And there's just, the temperatures are too warm. And I guess if it snowed more, it wouldn't recede so fast. But you can't really change that part, can you? You know, the Ice Fields Parkway, I've driven it before, but none of it rang a bell. Like, I drove through there today and I was like blown away. Like, wow, I don't remember it being like this. It's super impressive. Maybe, maybe my older self, my more mature self is just more impressive by these natural things than my younger self, but. But anyways, thank you for watching the video. If you liked it, maybe you'll hit the subscribe button. But anyways, thanks for watching and hopefully I'll see you next time.