Bow Lake

Bow Lake is a small lake in western Alberta, Canada. It is located on the Bow River, in the Canadian Rockies, at an altitude of 1920 m.

The lake lies south of the Bow Summitt, east of the Waputik Range (views including Wapta Icefield, Bow Glacier, Bow Peak, Mount Thompson, Crowfoot Glacier and Crowfoot Mountain) and west of the Dolomite Pass, Dolomite Peak and Cirque Peak.

Bow Lake is one of the lakes that line the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park and Jasper National Park, other such lakes being Hector Lake, Lake Louise, Peyto Lake, Mistaya Lake, Waterfowl Lakes, Chephren Lake and Sunwapta Lake.

Bow Lake is the closest lake to the headwaters of Bow River, and has a total area of 3.21 km².

Banff National Park (pronunciation: /ˈbæmf/) is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885 in the Rocky Mountains. The park, located 110–180 km (68–110 mi) west of Calgary in the province of Alberta, encompasses 6,641 km² (2,564 sq mi) of mountainous terrain, with numerous glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine landscapes. The Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise, connecting to Jasper National Park in the north. Provincial forests and Yoho National Park are neighbours to the west, while Kootenay National Park is located to the south and Kananaskis Country to the southeast. The main commercial centre of the park is the town of Banff, in the Bow River valley.

A natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural processes operate without human interference, but a wilderness must contain life. As implied, a natural landscape may contain either the living or nonliving or both. In his extensive travels in South America, Alexander von Humbolt became the first to conceptualize a natural landscape. Some have described a transition of a pristine landscape state to a humanized landscape state—which includes the human-modified landscape, the primeval landscape, the ancient landscape, the undisturbed wilderness and the managed landscape. The natural landscape is a place under the current control of natural forces and free of the control of people for an extended period of time.