Canada, Jasper National Park, Glacier

(2 photos)
Sometime in the 1960s, in this Snowmobile or Snowcoach, we toured the Athabasca Glacier, the most-visited glacier on the North American continent, in Canada’s Jasper National Park. The beauty of glacier, with rushing water from the melting ice and snow, was awsome.

(Unllike other times and places (mentioned elsewhere) where someone was kind enough to take our picture, we did not worry about them running away with our camera — there was no place to run.)
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The melting ice fills the rivers and lakes for many miles. Glacier water is milky near the glacier, then it gets more and more an emerald shade, then becomes clear as it travels further, and the sediment settles to the bottom. The color is a result of all the sediment suspended in the glacier ice for many years. There are several lakes that are a different shade of color as they are further from the glacier.

This is not just a feature of this glacier, we remember in the Furka Pass, Switzerland, seeing exactly the same color water changing from milky, to emerald to “normal” as the miles were traveled. The color of the water, especially when the sun shines just right, is one of the reasons Lake Louise is so beautiful.