Glacier National Park (Canada) vs Kootenay National Park
Two parks in British Columbia. Glacier National Park (Canada) has no online ticket listed; Kootenay National Park has 3 tickets and tours to book. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
Canada's Glacier National Park, which must not be confused with the American park of the same name in Montana, lies in the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia, part of the Columbia ranges that stand to the west of the Rockies, and the Trans-Canada Highway runs through the middle of it, over Rogers Pass, so that it is seen by everyone who drives between Calgary and Vancouver. The pass is about seventy kilometres, three quarters of an hour, east of the town of Revelstoke and eighty kilometres, an hour, west of Golden, which are the nearest places with a full range of accommodation, and some four hours from Calgary; there is no public transport worth mentioning. A Parks Canada pass is required to stop in the park, though not to drive through. At the summit of the pass stands the Rogers Pass discovery centre, built in the form of one of the old railway snow sheds, with exhibits on the railway, the avalanches and the wildlife, a theatre and a bookshop, and it is the place to enquire about trail conditions and bear warnings.
Kootenay is the least visited of the four contiguous national parks of the Canadian Rockies, on the British Columbia side of the continental divide, and it is in effect a single scenic road with a series of short walks leading off it: Highway 93 South, the Banff-Windermere Highway, which leaves the Trans-Canada at Castle Junction, halfway between Banff and Lake Louise, crosses the divide at Vermilion Pass and runs ninety-four kilometres south-west through the park to the village of Radium Hot Springs. The park gate is thus forty minutes from Banff or Lake Louise and about two hours from Calgary. It is a park for a car, and most people see it as a day's outing from Banff or as the scenic way to the Columbia valley and on to the interior of British Columbia; the tours sold from Calgary and Lake Louise are day trips by van that drive the highway with stops at the main sights and a soak at the hot springs, or private tours combining Kootenay with Banff and Yoho.
