This morning we dropped by the village mall, picked some brochures from the information centre and got some breakfast foods at a grocery store to save some time on breakfast. Then we drove to the lake again. It took some time to find a spot to park, since the huge parking lot was filled up and cars were circling around like vultures... There was a ton of tourists at the lake, so we took some photos with the beautiful lake and went hiking around the lake.

First part of the hike was easy and flat and we made it to the far side of the lake where it connects to the streams coming from glaciers . There we discovered a whole colony of golden-mantled ground squirrels (in Russian: золотистый суслик) living in a pile of rocks. They are hilarious little creatures: stripey, furry, fat, with tiny round ears, short tails and twitchy noses! They are used to people and come up to you in hopes of food. People who left their backpacks on the ground quickly found one or two of those little guys sneaking around sniffing out food. A big fat leader-looking squirrel sat on top of a rock and squeaked from time to time to show his leadership abilities, most likely :) I picked some berries from a nearby bush and we fed them to the squirrels, who ate from our hands and one of them even bit Julia a little (didn't break skin, so it's fine). We hung around the rock pile for half an hour observing and feeding the squirrels and then moved on.

A little further ahead we saw the area where streams of melted water from glaciers fed into the lake bringing ground up rock particles that give the lake that amazing colour . At one point we had to cross the stream hopping from rock to rock, some of which were partially submerged. Then the path started climbing up and the hike became much harder. The views were definitely worth the work. We saw glaciers on top of the mountains, moraines (huge piles of stones left by the glaciers), rocks, trees, mountains and valleys. After 2 hours of hiking uphill, we finally made it to a mountaintop, where some Swiss guides built a tea house as a rest stop for hikers. We had some tea, soup and sandwiches up there, and rested to get ready for the hike down. The food was pretty expensive, but it's understandable, since all the ingredients have to be carried up by the stuff of pack horses daily. After an hour of rest and enjoying the views, we headed down and the hike down took us only about 1.5 hours. Then we observed the ground squirrels for a bit, but most of them were hiding already. Finally, we returned to the parking lot and drove to our next destination.

The second destination of the day was Moraine Lake, another glacially-fed lake near Lake Louise . It is surrounded by ten tall mountain peaks and the view is so famous that is appeared on the reverse side of the 1969 and 1979 issues of the Canadian twenty dollar bill. One of the trails around the lake were marked with bear warnings and it's actually against the law to go on that trail in a groups smaller than 4 people. Still, we didn't notice any bear activity in the area. After hiking a short trail around the lake and back, we drove back to the hotel.