Canada

Canada

The water really is that colour, an impossible turquoise that looks photoshopped until you're standing at the edge of Lake Louise watching glacial silt catch the morning light. Banff is the Canadian Rockies compressed into a national park: valleys that dead-end at blue-white glaciers, elk wandering through town like they pay rent, and a two-lane highway (the Icefields Parkway) that might be the best drive on the continent. The town itself is touristy and expensive, $9 craft beers, souvenir shops selling moose plush toys, but step onto any trailhead and within 20 minutes you're alone with mountains that make you feel appropriately small.

Canada

You round a bend on the Icefields Parkway and the road just stops making sense. A glacier hangs off a cliff that shouldn't exist, a lake sits below it in a colour that has no business being that blue, and there are no buildings, no towns, nothing. The Canadian Rockies operate at a scale that makes most other mountain ranges feel like suggestions. The elk near Jasper townsite don't flinch when you slow down.