After more than a year in Canada, I’m finally writing my first Canadian post! I would like to start in one of the most beautiful place ever existed on Earth, which is Banff National Park. You will never know true beauty until you have seen Banff National Park. Ever heard of the Canadian Rockies? It’s basically part of the Rocky Mountains, covering over 4,800km across two countries : Canada to New Mexico, US. In order to visit these Canadian Rockies, it is crucial to understand that The Canadian Rockies stretches across a few national parks in Canada, namely Jasper, Kootenay, Yoho and more famously, Banff.

We are going to focus on the park which I’ve visited, Banff National Park. For a first-timer visiting this park, it is good to start with an understanding that Banff National Park stretches across two provinces : Alberta and British Columbia. You can technically visit Banff from Vancouver (12 hours bus ride), but it’s more popular tours come from Calgary due to its shorter distance, making it a day trip possible. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to talk about visiting from Calgary.

To be honest, I did not find any website with very useful information about visiting Banff National Park. There were a lot of information available but they were all over the place and I was absolutely overwhelmed! I’m going to try my best to break it down here especially for those first-timer’s visiting Banff.

WHERE TO HIKE IN BANFF NATIONAL PARK?

If you’re not a someone who hikes, the good news is that you don’t need to in order to enjoy the beautiful lakes. There are various lookout points and lakes (such as Lake Louise & Lake Moraine) which are easily accessible without breaking a sweat (unlike the Wineglass Bay in Tasmania, Australia). Let’s start with noting that there are many hiking trails in Banff National Park and they are located in FOUR different areas of the park, namely : Banff area (near downtown), Lake Louise area, Castle Junction area and Icefields Parkway area. You can explore the hikes and their difficulties by area here. When I visited, I just wanted to make it a day trip and found some of the most worthwhile trails I can take to make most of the day below:

HOw to get to banff national park?

Once you have determined which area and/or which hike you would like to do, the next step is figuring out how to get there. Getting to Banff National Park can be quite tricky. Declared as a UNESCO World Heritage in 1984, it covers over 6000 square kilometers.

For most shuttles from the city, it will first take you to Banff Town. From there, you can connect with Roam Transit, to get to where you need. Roam Transit also departs from Canmore, which makes a good and a more affordable accommodation (compared to Banff Town) option if you’re looking to visit for more than one day. For the purpose of this post, I will talk about a day trip you can take to Lake Louise & Lake Moraine included with short hikes that you can take.

CALGARY > BANFF > LAKE LOUISE AND LAKE MORAINE

From Calgary, you can first get on a bus via ON-IT regional transit. It’s $25 for a return trip and it will take about 2 hours to get to Banff. From there, you will need to walk about 2 mins to the Banff High School Transit Hub to take Roam Transit, get on either route 8X or 10 which will take you straight to Lake Louise and Lake Moraine respectively. The thing about Roam Transit is that there is no route that connects the two lakes unless you have the ROAM super pass.

You might come across the Lake Connector which claims to be a shuttle going between the two lakes (Lake Louise & Lake Moraine). While this is true, it only applies under two conditions: You have to have a Parks Canada Shuttle ticket AND YOU MUST START your departure from Lake Louise Park & Ride. The most discouraging part of this is that there is no public transport that you can take to Lake Louise Park & Ride.

Hence, if you intend to get there completely via public transport, you can do it via ON-IT and Roam Transit where you hold the ROAM Super Pass ticket. It is also important to plan your trip early and make those reservations.

As confusing as it was to figure out how to get to both lakes in one day, I found this site very useful which helped me a lot in my planning. While I wanted to be able to take public transport, I missed out on reserving the time slots which then leave me no choice but to join a day tour. That is probably the easiest and worry-free choice. Pro-tip: Pick the one that starts at Lake Moraine first, it is usually less crowded because most tours starts at Lake Louise first.

Between the two lakes, I enjoyed Lake Moraine more. While my favourite trail was the Rockpile trail, I had to be extra cautious when hiking up because it has a rocky pathway if when wet, can be dangerous and slippery. Once at the top, the majestic mountains surrounding the turquoise waters left me in absolute awe and it’s beyond anything that I could have imagined. Though cloudy, I like the fact that some parts of the mountains were hidden between the clouds, making it the perfect landscape.

Aside from that, the non-elevated lakeshore trails also had breathtaking views. In both lakes, there is an option to rent a canoe – allowing yourself to get closer the the mountains. They are limited and also very expensive in my humble opinion. Though, some would say that it is totally worth it.

I very much enjoyed this detour from my trip to Calgary. It was definitely worth it.

I’ll just leave this here.