Overview

Day 1: Getting Your Bearings (and your Bear Spray)

This itinerary assumes you’ll arrive sometime in the early afternoon. It takes about 90 minutes to get all the way to Banff from YYC. If you are hungry and don’t want to get all the way to Banff before eating, the town of Canmore is about 40 minutes closer and worth checking out. We ate at Graze, a burger/comfort food bar on the main strip.

This is a good time to pick up some bear spray and any other gear you need, as you’ll pay less for it than you will in Banff. We were happy with Gear Up Sports, which had a good price on bear spray and was flexible about our returning it, offering an after-hours option in case we were there after close. But don’t tarry–get to Banff, check into your hotel, and lace up your boots as you have a couple of late afternoon hikes.

Afternoon

If you want to stay in town, you can head up Sulfur Mountain. It overlooks Banff proper and is basically a straightforward set of switchbacks directly up the mountain. For the less adventurous, a gondola also runs up the hillside overhead. The trail is wide and doable even in running shoes, but it’s 90 minutes of more or less uninterrupted walking up a pretty good grade.

Our goal on day two was to summit Mount Eiffel. It’s a very hard hike under good conditions, but it would give us amazing views of Moraine Lake and the entire Valley of the Ten Peaks. It’s one of the most beautiful and photogenic spots on earth.

There are several good hikes that leave from the Moraine Lake parking lot—some of the best in the area—but the parking lot is not that large. Because Moraine Lake is so ridiculously beautiful, people literally sleep in their car so that they can post their adventure to Instagram. There are lines hundreds of people deep all day long to take pictures featuring themselves standing in outdoorsy-looking clothing.

You could spend months in the general vicinity of Banff and Kananaskis and never run out of new places to check out. With that said there are certain hikes and scrambles that offer views and experiences that stand out. Mostly, those standouts focus on high elevation so you can see more and farther. Cirque, like Eiffel, is a chance to get above 10,000 feet.

You could spend months in the general vicinity of Banff and Kananaskis and never run out of new places to check out. With that said there are certain hikes and scrambles that offer views and experiences that stand out. Mostly, those standouts focus on high elevation so you can see more and farther. Cirque, like Eiffel, is a chance to get above 10,000 feet.

You could spend months in the general vicinity of Banff and Kananaskis and never run out of new places to check out. With that said there are certain hikes and scrambles that offer views and experiences that stand out. Mostly, those standouts focus on high elevation so you can see more and farther. Cirque, like Eiffel, is a chance to get above 10,000 feet.

Builds your perfect trip one day at a time.

You tell us how many days you want, and we’ll build out your days, offering morning, afternoon, and evening suggestions, along with recommendations for restaurants and lodging.

You can customize everything by just telling us what you like – if you want to avoid crowds we can help. If you want only things that start with the letter S we can do that too.