Parks Canada introduced mandatory shuttle access to Moraine Lake in 2023 after vehicular congestion forced road closures by 05:30 on peak summer mornings. The 14-kilometre Moraine Lake Road, carved into the western slope of the Wenkchemna Range in 1899, climbs 300 vertical metres from the Trans-Canada Highway to an elevation of 1,884 metres, where a glacially fed lake reflects the Valley of the Ten Peaks in water coloured turquoise by suspended rock flour. Walter Wilcox, who explored the valley in 1899, believed the lateral ridge damming the lake was glacial moraine; geologists later identified it as a rockslide deposit, but the name persisted. The shuttle system transformed access to one of the most photographed vistas in the Canadian Rockies. Between mid-May and mid-October, Parks Canada operates a fleet of buses departing Lake Louise village at intervals from 04:00 to 19:30, with the earliest Alpine Start departures timed to deliver visitors to the rockpile viewpoint 20 minutes before sunrise. The 1,885-metre rockpile trail, a 24-metre scramble over angular quartzite boulders, offers the canonical sightline across the lake to Wenkchemna Peak and Mount Fay. Demand for moraine lake sunrise shuttle tour seats peaks between late June and early September, when daybreak arrives between 05:15 and 06:30 and the lake surface remains mirror-calm until thermal winds begin around 08:00. Moraine Lake lies within the 6,641-square-kilometre Banff National Park, established in 1885 as Canada's first national reserve and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Valley of the Ten Peaks—ten summits above 3,000 metres arrayed along a single ridgeline—forms the lake's southern backdrop. Indigenous Stoney Nakoda and Tsuut'ina peoples travelled these valleys for centuries before European mapmaking; the peaks were renamed in 1894 using Stoney numerals, though the practice of renaming Indigenous landscapes remains contested. The lake's colour intensity varies with meltwater inflow: peak turquoise saturation occurs in late July and early August, when glacial melt reaches maximum volume and sunlight penetrates deep enough to scatter blue wavelengths while reflecting green from the lakebed silt.