Turquoise Braids

A turquoise-coloured braided river weaves its way through the mountains. Braided rivers are formed when the volume of water varies significantly, has high sediment loads and steeper slopes than meandering rivers. In the springtime after all the snow melts, this river would look completely different with a much larger volume of water completely engulfing the entire floodplain. As glaciers and snow melts, they release fine particles consisting of silt, clay and glacial till.  The water gets is turquoise blue colour from the high volume of particles suspended in the water which scatters sunlight and produces this natural phenomenon.