| Feature Type: | Lake - Inland body of standing water. |
| Status: | Official |
| Name Authority: | BC Geographical Names Office |
| Relative Location: | W of junction of Kicking Horse and Yoho Rivers, in Yoho National Park NE of Golden, Kootenay Land District |
| Latitude-Longitude: | 51°26'34"N, 116°31'53"W at the approximate centre of this feature. |
| Datum: | WGS84 |
| NTS Map: | 82N/7 |
|
|
Origin Notes and History:
|
Adopted in the 2nd Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, 30 June 1900. Source: BC place name cards, files, correspondence and/or research by BC Chief Geographer/Geographical Names Office. |
|
Named by early mountaineering guides because of its extraordinary colour. Glaciers once covered this area and as the ice retreats, their meltwaters pick up a variety of sedimentary materials and carry it downstream to depressions surrounded by glacial debris, creating glacier-water lakes like this. The green or turqoise colour is from the finely ground-up rock flour suspended in the water: the scattering effect which the suspended particles has on the light, combined with the reflection of blue sky, gives the water its remarkable blue-green colour. Source: BC place name cards, files, correspondence and/or research by BC Chief Geographer/Geographical Names Office. |