When one of my best friends got transferred for work to Calgary, I immediately booked a trip. I’ve been wanting to visit the Canadian Rockies for YEARS – it was one of my favorite places to plan trips in back when I worked for a wholesale travel company in San Francisco, and the photos have always seemed so dreamy to me. We only had a long weekend, but I was amazed at what we were able to see and do in just three days, two nights from Calgary. A whole week in this region would be amazing!! I wanted to write up a quick recap though, since my impromptu video highlighting the region missed so many amazing things.
Day 1: We left Calgary in the morning to head west into the hills. Since we made great time, we just sort of breezed through the town of Banff Springs. It’s adorable, and we had planned to have lunch at one of the MANY cute restaurants in town, but our big breakfast in Calgary changed that plan. We drove by the iconic Fairmont Banff Springs, which is this amazingly gorgeous mountain castle, and got out for a quick little wander by our first white water of the trip. Bow Falls is really just a section of rapids near the hotel on one of many hiking paths in the area, but it was pretty and nice spot to stop & stretch our legs. My friend had just done the Banff Gondola recently, so we skipped that and headed north towards two of the premier lakes of the National Park. Moraine Lake is located just before Lake Louise, about 40 minutes north of Banff. Especially in high season, the small parking lot at the lake gets completely overfilled, so you’ll see signs pointing you to the overflow lot for the park & ride shuttles into town… but my friend was equipped with local confidence, and we forged ahead. Luckily, the fact that it was a cool and rainy weekday was in our favor, and the road leading up to the parking lot wasn’t blocked off, and there was one or two spots opening up when we arrived, so we had no problem. Know, however, that if you come on an especially crowded day, getting to these lakes will take a few extra dollars and a decent amount of extra time if you have to do the park & ride situation. However, after a pit stop at the cute little Moraine Lake Lodge, it was time to marvel at that insanely blue water. Moraine Lake is not alone in it’s spectacular color, but maybe because of the misty day we were having, it seemed the most extraordinary to me. We scrambled up the very cool slate rock path to some overlook points (on the “Rock Pile” according to the map!) which were just awesome. This spot is WELL worth the effort, but is only really open in the summer due to avalanche risks. After exploring around for 30-45 minutes, we hopped back in the car for our late lunch at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise. This is another outstanding and elegant 5 star hotel, located directly on the beautiful lake… but fair warning – there’s really nothing else in Lake Louise. Unlike Banff, the town is NOT the destination – it really is only about the hotel and the lake. You really can’t park right at the Fairmont unless you’re staying at one of the Fairmonts or you have a dining reservation, but luckily there was plenty of room in the lots just a few minutes walk away. (Again- they encourage people to use the overflow lots + shuttles which to me looked like a pain.) Lunch was delicious, but that view is really to die for. There’s something about the way the mountains frame Lake Louise that is magical. The water is nowhere near the color of some of the others I saw, but the reflections – even on our misty day – were magnificent. We hiked a fair bit around the lake and could have kept on going, but the presence of a park ranger blocking off certain paths due to a bear sighting (we think) and the fact that we had no bear spray kept us close to the hotel. The hiking around here must be simply unbelievable though! Definitely one of the things I regret not having time to do more of. After poking around town a little, we called it an early night with some games in our hotel (which was the surprisingly cute Lake Louise Inn – certainly no Fairmont, but a fine alternate if needed.)
Day two dawned still with plenty of clouds, but the sun proved to be more powerful as it came out more & more as the day went on. We immediately headed north onto the Icefields Parkway towards Jasper National Park – but before we could really get going, we noticed a bus stopped on the side of the road, along with a few cars. This clued us in: a wildlife sighting. Once we maneuvered into a safe spot off the road in front of the bus & other cars, we saw it – a black bear!!! We were SO excited to even see that, but then we saw not one but TWO baby cubs dart further up into the forest. A mamma AND her babies, not 20 feet away from us (if that)! SO cool!! Once they disappeared into the woods we had one more lake to check out before getting into Jasper. Located about a half hour north of Lake Louise, Peyto Lake requires a fairly steep little hike of about 10 or 15 minutes to get up to the overlook, but it is worth every bit of shortness of breath. OH MY GOODNESS – this may have been my favorite lake. Not only is the color the amazing turquoise you hope for, and not only is it settled among towering white capped mountains, but it’s also shaped like a wolf!! SUCH a beautiful sight to see – again- hiking around here must be simply stunning.
Back in the car for about an hour’s more drive into Jasper, officially, and the Columbia Icefield Centre. This is probably one of the top tourist destinations in the area, and the number of busses and cars in the parking lots proved it. Luckily, we booked our combo tour time the day prior, so we had no issues – but I can’t imagine what happens to people who just show up. This place is a machine of moving people around. We had a surprisingly good lunch from the buffet before getting in line to board our bus over to the staging area by the Athabasca glacier – the lowest of the 3 visible glaciers (from this point) pouring off of the larger icefield (up above all the mountains on that side of the road). At the staging center we switched over to our giant-wheeled glacier mobiles and had an entertaining and educational drive over the moraine (the torn up rocks & dirt left behind as a glacier moves) and onto the actual glacier itself. SO frigging cool! The water running all around – because summer does equal glacial melt season – was crystal clear, and the ice often had that incredible super blue hue deep down. Of course there was a bit of dirt on top of the ice from different pollution sources, but man is it impressive. After wandering around the safe zone & taking zillions of photos, it was time to head back to the staging area to get on a different bus to take us to the skywalk. Now- they call this a glacier skywalk, but it’s actually about 10 minutes down the road the the walk isn’t over any glacier at all – so you could conceivably skip this if you had limited time. It sure was pretty though! We loved being way up over the gorge with all it’s waterfalls below, and of course there’s a bit of an adrenaline rush when walking on “glass” that high up. I will say that the company that runs it has really charming (and mostly very attractive) young staff all over the place to help educate you on all the nature in the area. For example – there’s a reason you really don’t want to get anywhere near a grizzly bear, since my entire head could fit into it’s jaw. YIKES. In any case- after our glacier adventure, we were pretty tired and pushed on through the next hour-ish section of the drive to get to our hotel for the night – the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. Before we got there, we did have to stop for some more wildlife- once for another mother & baby pair of mountain goats, and once for a bunch of elk lounging next to the road in Jasper itself (no pic b/c they were all laying around across the road & there was too much traffic…) Now this Fairmont is very different from most other Fairmonts I’ve seen, in that it really is more of a lake lodge, with individual buildings holding 4 or so rooms strewn around the grounds and rooms that have some years on them. The main lodge with it’s multiple restaurants, pools, lake activities, etc was pretty amazing though, I have to say. Our dinner overlooking the lake as the sun set was seriously spectacular.
By day three we were pretty wiped out, so we had a slow morning with a delicious brunch in downtown Jasper. Jasper is much like Banff in that it is adorable with lots of shops and restaurants, but it also seems more authentic, with more locals roaming about than tourists. It may have just been the difference between Sunday morning and Friday afternoon, but that was my gut reaction. Once again, we decided to skip the Jasper gondola since we were having a slow morning. Plus we made the difficult decision to skip Maligne Canyon and lake, since we really didn’t have time to do all that and get back down to Calgary at any decent hour. That is definitely one area I’m sad I missed, but we absolutely made the right decision because our afternoon of chasing waterfalls through Jasper was amazing. First on this beautiful day was Athabasca Falls. These aren’t particularly high, but they are super, crazy powerful! The water has created these “potholes” in the gorge below, and it’s all just ridiculously stunning. We loved scrambling all around down to the exit of the falls, where we saw some white water rafters heading down river (another amazing activity I wish I’d had time for!). Next we popped into the actual pull out for the Goats & Glaciers stop (where we’d seen the mom & baby goat the day before) – I’m SO glad we did because not only is it beautiful, but we saw all sorts of mountain goat action. (And the same Mom & baby again I think!) Then we popped into the Sunwapta Falls area which boasts a cute little shop & “resort”. You can tell we were starting to become snobby, because for whatever reason these falls just didn’t impress us quite as much as Athabasca. Not as big or powerful, but still quite lovely. Here are shots for the first part of the day:
Ok- this next section of the day might be one of my favorites. Firstly, we stopped at a place the valley opened up a little to try to get some photos of the glories around us with some of the wild flowers growing around, but then our goal was Tangle Creek Falls. We had driven by them the day prior right after our glacier adventure, but were too tired & unprepared to actually stop & look at it. We knew it looked impressive (it’s directly off the road this time), but once we actually stopped and got out of the car?! MY GOODNESS – I loved these so much! They’re not nearly as big & powerful as the previous two, but they’re much higher with all of these different levels. Because they’re not as scary-powerful, you can also clamber around and get quite close to them. It was so fun & beautiful, I didn’t even care that we didn’t see bighorn sheep (which are said to congregate there sometimes). Once we were done & passed by the icefield center again, we were just settling into the lovely drive when we saw more stopped cars. At this point we were sort of blase (having seen another black bear on the day before that I couldn’t get a good shot of)… but then we saw a flash of light brown fur & I was SURE it was a Grizzly. What followed was some of the most excited 15 or so minutes I’ve had in a while. It was certainly not a grizzly bear, but this light brown black bear was making his way down the road in our same direction, happily pausing to munch on things here & there. My friend was an expert driver (while I hung out the sun roof taking millions of photos), pulling us off to stay safe yet keeping us moving to good vantage points of the bear as he moved. The traffic really became a total cluster as people were all over that road, and people were yelling at each other – and I was yelling at people to stay in their cars (again – I was sure it was a grizzly… though honestly no matter what kind of bear they shouldn’t have gotten out of their cars!). The adrenaline rush was an awesome grand finale to this trip.
Just think – if I had this much fun up there in just three days, what fun could you have with a little more time!?!? It’s seriously a dream destination for any nature lover. Great for families, and so many options from camping to 5* luxury. Contact me to see how you can get out to see this beautiful part of our world!
Also- if you want to see this all in action – I also did a video recap for your viewing pleasure. You can hear how excited we were about that last bear! 🙂