Pyramid Lake (Pyramid Island Footbridge), Patricia Lake & WWII 'Project Habakkuk'

Perched on a forested glacial bench just 6 to 8 kilometres (10 minutes' drive up Pyramid Lake Road, a 45-minute hike or bike ride, or reachable on the local Jasper Transit bus) directly above downtown Jasper sit two peaceful, deep mountain lakes watched over by the distinctive red-and-orange iron-stained quartzite pyramid of 2,763-metre Pyramid Mountain: Patricia Lake and kidney-shaped Pyramid Lake.

1. Pyramid Lake & Walking Onto 'Pyramid Island' (Free Parking 24/7)

Drive to the northern end of Pyramid Lake Road and you arrive at Pyramid Island, the most romantic and accessible lakeside spot in Jasper National Park:

• The Wooden Footbridge & 1933 Stone Shelter: walk across the picturesque wooden post-and-rail footbridge onto a tiny, pine-and-spruce-covered rocky island sitting right in the middle of the lake. Stroll the flat 5-minute loop path around the island to sit on the lakeside benches or inside the historic 1933 timber-and-fieldstone shelter, looking straight across the mirror-flat water at the towering symmetrical triangle of Pyramid Mountain.
• Best Time to Visit: come at sunrise when morning mist rises off the glass-calm water and the eastern sun lights Pyramid Mountain in fiery crimson alpenglow, or come after dark; because Pyramid Island has zero streetlights, it is the top spot in Jasper to photograph the Milky Way and Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) reflected in the water. (In summer, rent a canoe, kayak or pedal-boat at Pyramid Lake Resort; in winter, skate on the cleared lake rink).

2. Patricia Lake & The Secret WWII 'Ice Aircraft Carrier' (Project Habakkuk, 1943)

On your way up to Pyramid Lake, pull over at emerald-green Patricia Lake and read the lakeside historic plaque for one of the wildest true stories of World War II: in the winter of 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten approved top-secret 'Project Habakkuk', a plan to build an unsinkable, 600-metre-long aircraft carrier out of Pykrete (a bullet-proof frozen mixture of 86% water ice and 14% wood pulp sawdust) to hunt German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. In February 1943, Canadian engineers secretly built a 60-foot-long, 1,000-ton refrigerated prototype ice ship right here on frozen Patricia Lake (kept frozen all summer by a refrigeration engine until the project was cancelled; its wooden beams and cooling pipes still rest 25 metres underwater on the bottom of Patricia Lake today for scuba divers).