How We Live: Larch march adds to the Lake Louise squeeze

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The fleeting opportunity to stampede to Banff National Park and hike up to see the annual golden glow that is larch season is fast coming to a close.

It’s tough to time the brief window of larch madness because the season varies slightly every year, roughly mid-to-late September into early October, a couple of weeks at best.

When I visited the Lake Louise area on Sept. 19, we were a hair too early, with the larches only just starting to turn. But if you hit peak larch season, the deciduous pine trees put on a dazzling display, changing from bright green to a deeply burnished yellow and painting the mountain landscape with a wash of gold before fading and dropping their needles.

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Hiking the Larch Valley Trail, which starts from Moraine Lake, is the most famous way to view this natural phenomenon. The sight of all that gold set against the flint-grey Rockies and the surreal turquoise lake in the valley below makes for a breathtaking experience.

What’s also breathtaking is the crush of visitors during the “larch march” and basically all summer. Even mid-week, Moraine Lake Road and the parking lot were mobbed with buses, shuttles and people, and I came away thinking that the best word to describe the Lake Louise area is squeezed.

True, I was part of the mob. This time, though, my perspective was sharpened by being on a bus with my outdoors club, which runs weekly hiking, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing trips to the mountains near Calgary. Members take turns being “day leader,” which means organizing the many details of a trip for 55 or more people.

For this trip, our day leader was a retired Parks Canada policy advisor. As we drove toward Lake Louise that morning, he outlined some of the pressures on the loved-to-death area. He asked us to consider the job of the Banff National Park superintendent, who must somehow balance the complex challenges facing the Lake Louise area. Think about what you’d do in his shoes, he said, and let’s share our ideas on the ride home.

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The challenges are immense. This wild place is where lynx, wolves and especially grizzlies, a keystone species, make their home and raise their young in two wildlife corridors flanking the Bow River. Those corridors are squeezed by a village, hotels, campgrounds, a railway, the TransCanada Highway, a downhill ski area, networks of trails and many, many visitors, both local and international. The area’s popularity with humans dates back thousands of years for Indigenous Peoples.

In the last 10 years, visitation has increased by 31 per cent. Trail use in Larch Valley is up 400 per cent. Vehicle traffic on Lake Louise Drive, the winding road up to Moraine Lake and Lake Louise (two of the most popular destinations in Banff National Park) has risen 70 per cent.

These sobering facts are from the Visitor Use Management Plan for the Lake Louise Area page on the Parks Canada website. The plan is looking at long-term ways to manage visitor use that “provides safe public access and high-quality experiences while conserving the ecosystems and natural splendour that make this place so special.” Seems impossible, right?

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The plan encompasses Upper Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Paradise Valley, the Lake Louise Park and Ride system and the transportation corridors that link them. There’s a separate process looking at the Lake Louise community itself.

The big squeeze was evident as soon as we arrived in Lake Louise Village that morning and saw the roundabout at the intersection of Sentinel Road, Fairview Drive and Lake Louise Drive ripped up. Plugged with over one million vehicles every year, it’s being modernized.

That pressure’s been somewhat alleviated by the decision in 2023 to close Moraine Lake Road to personal vehicles year-round. Now only public or private buses/shuttles with the proper credentials are permitted from June to mid-October (save for Moraine Lake Lodge guests and those with disabilities). It’s not easy to get here and it’s not free anymore.

Once we arrived at the parking lot and started hiking, the madness melted away. I went to Eiffel Lake and our small group saw only a modest number of hikers on the trail. The day, with its awe-inspiring panoramas of the Valley of Ten Peaks, and the experience of perching on a cliff above the lake for lunch, seeing the first blushes of yellowing larches and enjoying the company of fellow hikers filled my cup. It’s magical here.

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Back on the bus, a few shared their opinions about what they’d do as parks superintendent: Cut tourism. Allow locals only. Build funiculars like in Switzerland.

I had no answers to our day leader’s provocative question but it certainly raised my awareness and spurred me to learn more.

A good place to start is the Visitor Use Management Plan for the Lake Louise Area webpage at https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/info/gestion-management/involved/ll-vum. For those interested in contributing their ideas, Parks Canada will be seeking more public input this winter.

There are no simple fixes. We live in the fastest-growing province in Canada, one blessed with natural beauty. Global tourism is ever-increasing and, like elsewhere, over-crowding threatens desirable places like Lake Louise. More of us, myself included, will want to keep visiting. There will never be perfect solutions, but with careful planning and difficult compromises, we may preserve reasonable access as well as the beauty and ecosystem that draw us here.

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