Banff National Park

Banff National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Banff is Canada's first and most visited national park, ninety minutes west of Calgary, and it is sold in every form. The day tours from Calgary drive to the town of Banff, Lake Louise and Moraine Lake with photo stops and return in the evening; they are the option for people without a car, and since 2023 they are also the only way to reach Moraine Lake by road, because private cars are banned from its access road and the shuttle and the tour operators are the alternatives. From Banff and Canmore, the full-day lake tours cover Louise, Moraine and the Icefields Parkway to the Columbia Icefield or cross into Yoho for Emerald Lake and Takakkaw Falls; the wildlife tours go out at dawn and dusk along the Bow Valley Parkway for elk, bighorn sheep and bears;

the guided nature walks and the Johnston Canyon icewalks in winter are short and cheap. The big canoe trips on the Bow river and the kayaking on Vermilion Lakes are gentle, and the hop-on hop-off buses run between the town's sights. The park pass, per person per day or the annual Discovery Pass, is bought at the gates or online and is included by most tour operators; the Banff gondola, the Lake Louise summer gondola and the Icefield glacier vehicles are separate tickets that sell out in summer. The two- to four-day tours from Calgary or Vancouver combine Banff with Jasper and Yoho. Independent visitors need a car or the Roam bus network, and the Parks Canada shuttles for Lake Louise and Moraine Lake must be reserved in advance in summer.

Visiting Banff National Park: what you will see

The park was established in 1885 around the hot springs the railway workers found on Sulphur Mountain, and it covers 6,641 square kilometres of the Rocky Mountains along the Alberta side of the continental divide, part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site since 1984, with the Bow valley and the Trans-Canada highway running through it and the town of Banff and the village of Lake Louise inside it. Lake Louise, turquoise below the Victoria glacier with the château on its shore, and Moraine Lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks are the two images of the park, and the crowds match; the walks to the Lake Agnes teahouse and the Plain of Six Glaciers above Louise and the rockpile at Moraine are the ways to see them properly.

The Icefields Parkway north to Jasper passes Bow Lake, Peyto Lake from its viewpoint and the Columbia Icefield, whose Athabasca glacier is walked on by giant snow coaches. Around the town, the Banff gondola climbs Sulphur Mountain for the boardwalk along the ridge, the Cave and Basin hot springs are where the park began, the Upper Hot Springs are still open for bathing, and Johnston Canyon's catwalks lead to the waterfalls in the gorge. Elk graze the golf course and the town's edges, bighorn sheep stand on the Minnewanka road, black and grizzly bears feed on the dandelions along the Bow Valley Parkway in June, and wolves, cougars and wolverines keep to the back country. The park gets more than four and a half million visitors a year, most of them in the Bow valley, and the back-country trails beyond the Lake Louise corridor are almost empty.

Banff National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open all year; the Lake Louise shuttles and the Moraine Lake road operate from late May or June to mid-October, and Moraine Lake is closed to vehicles in winter. July and August are the peak, with warm days, all the trails open and the parking at Lake Louise full by 7 am; late June still has snow on the high trails, and September, with the larches turning gold in the Larch Valley above Moraine in the last two weeks, is the finest month.

Winter from December to March is ski season at the three resorts and brings frozen lakes, ice walks and quiet roads. Reserve shuttles, gondolas and the glacier tour weeks ahead in summer. Allow three days for the Bow valley and the lakes, and a week with Jasper. Yoho and Kootenay are next door in British Columbia, and Calgary is the airport.