Last week I was in Banff for a conference on Explicit Methods for Finding Rational Points on Varieties. On Wednesday afternoon we took a hike around Lake Louise. We started out in the snow on the ice, then cut across the lake to a beautiful blue ice-fall (apparently the blue color of the water the tourist feature of Lake Louise in the summer). We walked back along a well-packed trail through the forest (along which we had seen a horse drawn sleigh earlier). We heard an avalanche from the glacier at the end of the lake, and turned in time to see the aftermath of snow hanging in the air like smoke.

The snowy tree cover on the sides of the lake produces a strange effect from a distance; the patches of snow that are in reality hanging on the tree branches appear to form a detached layer in front, as if specs on a computer screen.

From left to right: me, Kiran Kedlay, Minhyong Kim, Bjorn Poonen.

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