Banff National Park
— — the green the glacier leaves in the water.
Not only on a wall.
“Canada's first national park, set across the Bow Valley where the Rockies fold into one another. The lakes here are the colour people travel a long way to see: Louise, Moraine, Peyto, each carrying a different shade of the same glacial silt. The town of Banff sits at the base of Cascade Mountain. Elk wander the golf course. Trains still come through. In the shoulder seasons the road to Lake Minnewanka empties out and the larches turn the same yellow as the aspens below them.
Banff National Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Banff National Park covers 6,641 square kilometres of the Canadian Rockies along the Continental Divide in Alberta, bordering Yoho and Kootenay parks in British Columbia. Established in 1885 around the Cave and Basin hot springs, it is Canada's oldest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. The Bow River runs the length of the valley, past the town of Banff and on to Lake Louise. The Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian Pacific rail line both thread the same corridor.
The lake water reads turquoise because of rock flour — extremely fine particles of ground stone carried out of the Victoria and Wenkchemna glaciers in suspension. The particles scatter the shorter wavelengths of sunlight, leaving the green and blue. Moraine Lake, at 1,884 metres in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, holds the brightest version of the colour from late June through September, when meltwater is highest. Lake Louise carries the same chemistry a few kilometres north. By October the inflow slows and the colour deepens toward a darker teal.
The park is open all year but the road to Moraine Lake is closed to private vehicles after mid-October and reopens at the start of June. Late September brings the larch turn around Larch Valley and Sentinel Pass, a two-week window the locals plan around. Winter quiets the townsite; the ice on Lake Louise is cleared for skating from late December through March. Black bears emerge from the slopes in April. The shoulder weeks in May and early November are the emptiest the park ever gets.