Banff, Jasper & the Icefields Parkway

The lakes in the Canadian Rockies are a color that photographs can't quite capture, a milky turquoise that comes from fine glacial rock flour in the water. We heard "is that real?" about twenty times on the trip.

Moraine Lake is now closed to private cars, so you need to arrive by shuttle or with a licensed tour. We booked the earliest slot, which meant leaving Banff at 4:30am. When the sun hit the peaks above the lake, the whole group went silent. After that, nobody complained about the wake-up call.

We canoed on Lake Louise, hiked up to the tea house at Lake Agnes, which has been serving tea since 1905, and saw five bears in total, all from a safe distance, including a mother grizzly with two cubs by the side of the road near Bow Lake.

The Icefields Parkway is 232 kilometers of mountains, glaciers and waterfalls between Lake Louise and Jasper. Most people drive it in a few hours. We took all day, stopping at Peyto Lake, which is shaped like a wolf's head, and walking out onto the Athabasca Glacier with a guide.

Jasper was a reminder that this is a living landscape. A large wildfire hit the town in 2024, and burned many homes and businesses. A year later, the town was busy rebuilding. We stayed in a local lodge, ate in local restaurants, and talked with people who'd lost a lot and were glad to see visitors back. We did have one smoky day from fires farther north, which is now a normal part of summer in the Rockies. We moved our hike to the next morning and it cleared.