Gems Of The Canadian Rockies: How To Visit Lake Louise & Moraine Lake On The Shuttle Buses

If there was an award for the most beautiful spot on earth, I reckon it would be Moraine Lake.

This Canadian superstar has got the perfect viewpoint worthy of the bank note it adorned for years, with a snowy mountain background, a picturesque rocky foreground, and a tree-lined shore in between. And, if you get there at the right time of day, perfect reflections.

Yet Lake Louise seems to take all the glory. And I get it – the hiking is second to none, the views are iconic, and it’s much more accessible as you can still take a car. I’ll write more about that last point below, because the best way to visit both lakes now is via the Parks Shuttles.

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In my Canadian Rockies itinerary post, I mentioned that it makes sense to see both lakes in one day. However this may well depend on shuttle availability, and for what it’s worth, I visited both lakes twice, on different days, and I actually think this is totally worthwhile because you get different experiences depending on the time of day, the weather, and various other factors.

It also depends what you have planned at each lake. Personally, even though Moraine Lake is my favourite of the two and does have some epic hiking nearby, it’s the one you most likely need far less time at. If you’re not planning any hikes at Lake Louise, then another option would be parking after 7pm, which is FREE!

I actually did this on my way past when I first arrived in the Rockies, but I did want more time there to fit in a hike, so I also booked a shuttle for a different day.

Lake Louise has several trails such as the Lake Agnes tea house, the Beehives (Big & Little) and the Plain of Six Glaciers which has another tea house. You could quite reasonably spend all day just hiking, or visit more than once to fit it all in. Even after four visits, it’s somewhere I’m not done with yet!

Three years, three totally different views (June 2026, October 2018, September 2016)

On my recent trip, I was planning to do the Plain of Six Glaciers, but when I could only get a shuttle for 2pm, it was cutting it too fine with the tea house closing at 5pm. As it happens… early June means mixed conditions for hiking, and this trail actually wasn’t recommended due to the amount of snow still on the paths.

So I made it work. I did the Little Beehive trail (which only takes a couple of hours instead of five – and also had some snow on the trail), squeezed in a visit Moraine Lake on the same day just in case the weather took a turn overnight, and also booked an early Moraine Lake shuttle for the next day. As you can see from my reflection photos, this was VERY MUCH worth the second visit!

For comparison, here’s how it looked in the afternoon in similar weather:

I think if you manage to get an early morning shuttle to Moraine Lake, it would be easy to do both in one day. I spent around an hour at Moraine Lake (after getting there around 7.30am), which left me literally the whole day to see Lake Louise.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think you need to walk the shoreline trail at Moraine Lake either. The best view is from the rockpile (a 5-10 minute walk from the car park) and I also enjoy taking photos down by the canoes. You can, of course, rent a canoe for an hour if you’re willing to cough up $170+tax.

As it happens, I was off on the next part of my trip to see my family, which is why I made sure to spend a lot more time at Lake Louise the day before.

Let’s talk about the shuttles for Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, because this wasn’t a thing when we were last in Canada.

Lake Louise parking is a bit of a nightmare at the best of times (and, if you’re lucky enough to be one of the 25% who manage to get a space, costs a whopping $42 regardless of length of stay, unless you arrive after 7pm), so I’m glad that there are shuttles in place to control numbers and to give you a, err, stress-free way to visit, ahem. Let’s get onto that in a minute.

Moraine Lake is now closed to ALL traffic, so the only way to visit is by shuttle or on a tour.

Booking the Parks Canada shuttle to Lake Louise & Moraine Lake

On April 15th, 40% of shuttle tickets go on sale for the *entire season*. Given that these are two of the most popular destinations in the whole country, I can confirm (as can my colleagues who witnessed several “AAARRRGHHHHHHH”s during the booking process) that this is NOT stress-free.

After more than half an hour in the queue, every single morning slot for June was gone.

Excuse the photos of the screen as I did this on my work PC, but yes, that does indeed say that there are 58,955 people ahead of me in the queue. Flashbacks to the nightmare that was securing Studio Ghibli museum tickets… and just as I recommend for that, keep an eye on your time as it WILL suddenly drop dramatically as groups of people leave the queue.

Here’s a quick breakdown (to go along with mine):

• Go to the Parks Canada website – direct link to the Lake Louise shuttle here (you want the Day Use tab as per the above screenshot)
• First of all, make sure you set up an account before you want to buy the tickets – it helps with the process so much!
• Search for the date you need
• It will load this list of departures which shows what is and isn’t available
• Click on any of them to get a list of availability and to book

I had planned to book a midday/lunchtime slot for Lake Louise one day, and a morning slot for Moraine Lake the next… obviously we had to give up on Moraine, and the *earliest* I could get for Louise was 2pm. Not ideal when you’re planning a long hike!

It’s also worth noting that the 4am and 5am “Alpine Start” departures to Moraine Lake leave from the Lake Louise shorefront, meaning you would have to park there and cough up the massive parking fee on top of the shuttle cost. So realistically the earliest budget shuttle is at 6.30am, if you’re not bothered about sunrise. (There are also plenty of tour companies that offer sunrise tours!)

Whichever shuttle you choose, you have access to the connector shuttle between the two lakes, so it doesn’t really matter which you book!

However! Not all is lost. The rest of the tickets go on sale at 8am two days beforehand. This is especially good if you’re working around the weather and have some flexibility; not so good if you want it all sorted in advance so you don’t have to worry about it while you’re away.

Do also keep an eye on cancellations just in case. As you’ll see below, I changed my Lake Louise shuttle from two people to one, which means someone else would have been able to book it.

Changing a Parks Shuttle booking

So my plan now was to change Lake Louise to slightly earlier if possible, and more importantly, book that Moraine shuttle!

So how did I get on? Well, Lake Louise was a disaster because although there was plenty of earlier availability as soon as I got in, it wouldn’t allow me to select it because it “overlapped” with my existing booking!! There was no way in hell I was risking cancelling my booking in order to start again and find it all sold out. You’re meant to be able to change your existing booking but it wasn’t letting me do that either for some reason. (It’s because Canadian government websites are crap.)

I did at least manage to change it from 2 people to 1 person…

The change meant a refund of the $12.75 but a charge of an additional $3.50 transaction fee, which meant I just got a refund of $9.25.

Moraine, however, was much more successful! I had the page loaded with the date before it went on sale, so at 8am all I had to do was click on the time slot. I got a 7am one no problem, though I did notice it sold out after a whopping 3 minutes. So be quick and you SHOULD be fine unless you want 4am!

It’s worth noting, though, that this was mid-week in June, so a sunny weekend in July may be a very different story. All I’m saying is that the availability two days before was MUCH better than the April 15th nonsense, and it was way less stressful. No queues, just straight in and book like your life depends on it.

I find it quite frustrating that so many things need to be meticulously planned and booked these days, and this is not exclusive to Canada. Particularly for something that is so weather-dependent, it’s annoying having to be tied down to a particular day.

How the shuttles worked

So what about the shuttles themselves? Here’s how the timings went.

Park up at the Lake Louise Ski Area park & ride for free, and head on over to the shuttle area to the right of the ski centre (you can’t miss it). There are a few huts for tour companies like the Moraine Lake Bus Company, but you need the Parks Shuttle check-in huts.

Both days, it only took around 5-10 minutes to check in, and I hopped straight on a coach which left a few minutes later. I’d read that they go every half hour but from what it seemed, this wasn’t the case; it was much more regular.

The shuttle takes just 10 minutes to get to Lake Louise, and a further 25 minutes on the connector shuttle between Lake Louise and Moraine Lake.

The Moraine Lake shuttle (which doesn’t stop at Lake Louise) takes 30 minutes from the park & ride.

Whichever shuttle you book, you have unlimited access to the connector shuttle between the two lakes, so you can go back and forth as much as you like. This is especially great if you are planning around the weather, e.g. I arrived to rain, so I hopped straight over to Moraine Lake, and by the time I got back to Lake Louise, the rain had relented just in time for my hike! You are given a coloured wristband to distinguish which shuttle you’ve booked (I noticed that the colours change each day, so don’t think you can get away with re-using these!).

Overall, I thought the shuttles were brilliant. Some of the drivers are really entertaining, and this is really where the “stress-free” experience comes in; just hop on a bus and be driven to a beautiful destination.

And like I said before, it saves the real hassle of parking, which we had a nightmare with even ten years ago (I nearly had to skip Moraine Lake altogether in 2016!). Apparently in recent years, a whopping 75% of vehicles are turned away because the Lake Louise car park is full, and it usually fills up by sunrise. This is a much better way to go! The car park for the park & ride is absolutely massive and I had no issues finding a space even at lunchtime when you’d expect it to be at its most full.

You can also book plenty of tours, though bear in mind these are much more expensive. Parks Shuttles are $12.75 plus a $3.50 fee per transaction (so a booking for 4 people will still only be a $3.50 fee total).

There’s no doubt that Lake Louise and Moraine Lake are worth the hassle – but you DO need to be prepared.

Although I knew the basic info about the shuttles, there wasn’t much information about the booking process or how the shuttle experience is, so hopefully this post will come in handy for anyone planning this trip, as that’s exactly why I decided to write this.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with one of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken, of Lake Louise in October 2018 shortly after a snow storm. Unfortunately the snow storm caused the Moraine Lake road to close a week early, meaning we couldn’t get there at all. Even more soul-crushing when our planned day there was weather like this – totally unlike my other visits!

I’m sure it’s easy to see why this is one of my favourite places on earth. Even with tricky booking processes and crowds to match the popularity, I feel like these gems will never lose their magic.

Read more about the Canadian Rockies and BC:
⭐ Vancouver & The Canadian Rockies: An Epic 10 Day Road Trip Itinerary
⭐ What It’s Like Visiting Jasper In 2026 (With A Mount Robson Side Quest)
⭐ Road Tripping The Icefields Parkway In Autumn
⭐ My Top 10 Things To Do In Vancouver
⭐ A Spectacular Glacier Scenic Flight Over Whistler, Canada
⭐ Squamish, And Why I Prefer It To Whistler