Postcards from Canada: Maligne Lake

One of my favourite days in Canada was a very cold and rainy day in Jasper, where we hopped aboard a boat and explored the area’s biggest lakes, the beautiful Maligne Lake.

While the lake itself is one of the most iconic in the Rockies, surrounded by mountains such as Mount Brazeau and dense woodland, it was a small island at the end of the lake, Spirit Island that we were excited about seeing.

Wrapping up against the elements, we joined the small group aboard the boat which would take us along the lake; we had some fantastic guides who shared so much local knowledge and it was so interesting to hear about the history.

For me, I was amazed to hear about some of the First Nations to know about the lake, including Samson Beaver who drew a map for the iconic Mary Schaffer, an explorer and artist to help her find the lake for herself. There is even a Mary Schaffer trail you can follow, but we saved that for another day. 

The views were pretty eerie has we glided over the glacial lake in search of our destination and as a lover of cold, moody days I was in my element as the cloud and mist rolled across the mountains and trees which surround the lake. Maligne Lake is surrounded by many towering giants including Leah & Samson Peaks, Mount Paul and Mounts Charlton, Unwin, Mary Vaux. There are also three impressive glaciers which feed into the lake itself.

Seeing the iconic Spirit Island was quite emotional really. The island is thought to be a highly spiritual place for the Stoney Nakoda First Nation, who believe the surrounding mountains are representations of their ancestors. Spirit Island is surrounded by three sides of the same mountain range, which makes it extremely rare.

The mist had descended and it was softly raining as we finally hopped off the boat and got our first view of the island, it was breath-taking, with the bad weather putting most people off, it felt good to have the area pretty much to ourselves and I didn’t want to put my camera away. As one of the most iconic and photographed areas of the Rockies, it really was a bucket list moment.

We came back to the lake on our final day in Jasper and headed onto the lake in a canoe, it really does feel quite wild once you are out on it and you feel so small and unimportant as the lake stretches out for miles in front of you and the mountains tower up into the clouds.

We were also rewarded with our closest bear encounter too, as we parked up on arrival, a black bear ambled out of the bushes and across our path, we were so close to one of the most beautiful animals on the planet- what a moment!