One Week in the Canadian Rockies

This article will outline my one week road trip to the Canadian Rockies, starting and ending in Vancouver, BC. I am especially proud of this trip plan because we were able to keep our costs at only $790 per person! That includes our food, accommodations, and transportation costs!

My hope is that my sample itinerary will help you plan your own Canadian Rockies trip. Or even just inspire you to put the Canadian Rockies on your bucket list! I know visiting the Banff area can be discouraging because the area is associated with high prices, but my trip plan shows that visiting the Canadian Rockies is possible on any budget!

I will also address the effects of Covid-19 on our trip and how that impacted our personal plans, as well as the operations of the parks and attractions we visited.

Introduction

My partner and I live in the Vancouver area, and had actually been planning a Canadian Rockies road trip since last Summer (pre-Covid-19). We were thrilled that we had a vacation in the works that we could go ahead with. Hiking and being in the mountains brings me so much joy. A week in the Canadian Rocky Mountains was exactly the escape I needed. I would highly recommend this trip to every outdoors enthusiast.

Before I get into our itinerary, I want to address the issues related to road trips in terms of Covid-19. I will also discuss the precautions my partner and I took to keep ourselves and others safe.

Road Trips in the Age of Covid-19

Before you start planning your road trip, make sure you consider the level of risk your trip would pose. If you live somewhere with a high amount of cases, don’t go. If the place you plan on going has a lot of cases, don’t go. Make sure you are up to date on the Covid-19 travel guidelines for both where you live and where you are going. Always have hand sanitizer and a mask on hand. If you start feeling any symptoms leading up to the trip, cancel it.

Be respectful to the communities you are visiting. Remember that you can be asymptomatic and still be transmitting the virus to other people. Bring a mask and wear it when you go out, even if it is not mandatory. You are a guest in these communities. A lot of the communities you pass through on road trips are small and may not have the infrastructure to handle a Covid-19 outbreak.

Camping over Hotels

In addition to those precautions, my partner and I also decided to camp for two-thirds of the trip. I am not an expert, but from what I have read, camping can be lower risk for Covid-19 transmission than staying in a hotel if you are using proper safety precautions. You are not in a room previously used by someone else when you stay at a campsite. You are not exposing as many staff to your potential germs when they clean up after you. As long as you sanitize before and after using common spaces, such as taps and washrooms, the transmission risk is fairly low while camping. Most campsites have also kept high-risk areas, such as shower facilities, closed for the season. This reduces transmission and allow for increased cleaning of the open common areas.

Another reason camping reduces Covid-19 transmission is that when camping, you typically cook all your own meals. For our trip we also decided to buy all our camping groceries at our local store before the trip. This meant we did not need to enter as many stores or restaurants along the trip.

Never camped before? Check out my Car Camping Master Packing List to learn what to bring!

As an added bonus, camping saves you a ton of money, which you can see in our cost breakdown below!

Cost Breakdown

* We rented an SUV for a month, which resulted in a cheaper daily rate overall. For the purposes of this calculation, I’ve estimated the car rental cost based on the weekly rate on the Hertz website.

Notes on Expenses

As I explained in the Camping over Hotels section above, we bought all our groceries ahead of time, which saved us a lot of money. We did eat one meal out, which was our breakfast in Lake Louise.

We booked our two hotels through Booking.com. This saved us a bit of money, and also allowed us to book with free cancellations, which was something we wouldn’t have gotten booking directly with the hotels.

In order to visit places along the Ice Fields Parkway, you will need to purchase a discovery pass. We bought a year long pass, but there is also an option to pay per day when you enter. You can learn more about park passes here.

The Itinerary

Day 1:

• Drive from Vancouver to Revelstoke and spend night at the Ramada Hotel

Day 2:

• Drive to Banff and spend night at Two Jack Lake Campground
• Emerald Lake Loop Trail

Day 3:

• Visit the town of Banff and do the Tunnel Mountain hike
• Stops and Lake Minnewanka and Moraine Lake
• Spend night at Lake Louise Campground

Day 4:

• Lake Louise
• Helen Lake day hike (Ice Fields Parkway)
• Spend night at Lake Louise Inn

Day 5:

• Drive the Ice Fields Parkway to Jaspar (various stops)
• Spend night at Wapiti Campground

Day 6:

• Maligne Lake boat cruise
• Maligne Canyon
• Hike the Path of the Glacier Trail
• Spend night at Wapiti Campground

Day 7:

• Drive back to Vancouver

The Daily Breakdown

Day One

The first day was mainly a travel day. The drive from Vancouver to Revelstoke is about 6 hours. We opted to stay the night in Revelstoke instead of driving straight to Banff. That allowed us to pick up our groceries that morning and get organized without feeling rushed. The total driving time to Banff would have been about 9 hours, which is doable if you would rather not waste a night outside the Canadian Rockies.

The whole drive was very picturesque. We decided to cook our own dinner even though we were staying at a hotel this night and had a picnic at Woodenhead Park. It’s a nice little park that connects to walking trails along the river and the trail across the Revelstoke Suspension Bridge. If you’re planning to drive straight to Banff, this park makes a good rest stop, as it is at the end of a strip with several fast food options and gas stations.

Accommodation

We stayed at the Ramada by Wyndham. The hotel was well-cleaned and had lots of sanitizer available. We felt pretty comfortable. The room was nice, and our stay included breakfast, which is always a plus on a road trip. Covid-19 probably impacted the quality of the breakfast. Everything was individually wrapped and made ahead of time. My one complaint is that the breakfast options were not labeled. As someone who doesn’t eat meat, it made picking a breakfast sandwich into a bit of a guessing game. Over-all though, we had a great stay!

Day Two

We hit the road fairly early on day 2, as we knew we would be transitioning to Mountain Time and losing an hour. It was about a 2-and-a-half-hour drive to our first destination in the Canadian Rockies, which was Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park.

Emerald Lake is a very picturesque lake with a lodge and cabins that you can stay in for a hefty price. They also offer canoe and kayak rentals. We opted to do the Emerald Lake Loop, which is a loop trail around the lake. This is a nice easy hike with very few ups and downs. As you walk around the lake there are a lot of good photo ops at different angles. When you get about opposite from the starting point there is a nice meadow area where you will have the opportunity to see some wildflowers if you are there at the right time of year. If you are interested in this trail, check out my full post about it here. The trail took us about 2 and a half hours to complete. It could probably be done in about half the time, but we stopped to take lots of photos and for a snack break by the meadow.

Accommodation

Aside from a few lookout stops along the highway, our next stop was our campsite at Two Jack Lake Campground, located near Lake Minnewanka. We wanted to get the most out of our campsite this night, as we were lucky enough to snag a beautiful site right next to Two Jack Lake. Our site was walk-up. We had to walk back and forth a lot between the site and car, but it was worth it! We were also able to purchase a fire permit and have a campfire, which made for a nice relaxing evening.  

Another note about this campsite it that is was on a high bear alert. It is important whenever you are staying in campgrounds to keep yourselves and the wildlife safe by never leaving food or food related items unattended, and always storing everything in your vehicle or in the lockers provided by the campground.

Day Three

In the morning we quickly stopped by Lake Minnewanka. We didn’t stay long because it was very windy and quite cold still. Lake Minnewanka is the second longest lake in the Canadian Rockies, so it is more impressive when viewed from a higher elevation where you get a better idea of its size.

We spent the rest of our morning walking around the town of Banff. The main street was closed to traffic, so there was lots of space to social distance. We went in a few stores to get souvenirs and fuel for our camping stove. Had it not been for Covid-19, we probably would have looked into a lot more of the cute shops and had lunch in one of the cafes. Instead we had a picnic lunch in one of the parks, which was still very nice because there are mountain views in every direction whenever you are outside. The town itself is very adorable. All the streets are named after animals. If the streets at home had such cute names, I would be so much better at directions!

After lunch we decided to hike the Tunnel Mountain Trail, which gives overhead views of the town of Banff and all its surroundings. It is an easy hike because it is fairly short, only taking about 2 hours to hike both up and back. Don’t let the short time-frame fool you though, the way up is pretty steep. I was happy to have my hiking poles with me. I would describe it as a lot of effort in a short time for a big reward.

Covid-19 and Lake Louise

On our way to our campsite, we decided to try our luck for Lake Louise or Moraine Lake. Both lakes are accessed via Lake Louise Drive, and both have the same policy regarding Covid-19. In order to reduce the amount of people at each lake, they only allow the amount of cars that there are parking spots at a given time. That may sound obvious, but it is actually very limiting because no one can be dropped off and there are no buses allowed. Because of this, there are a lot of attendants directing you to spots or turning you away when it’s full. The parking lots also fill up extremely fast in the morning and stays full all day because a lot of people do day-long hikes from the lakes.

We drove up to the Lake Louise lot and they turned us away. They directed us down to the Moraine Lake turn off and were lucky enough to get a spot! We arrived at a good time, as the boat rentals had just closed but the park was still open, so the last wave of boaters were on their way out. For viewing either Lake Louise or Moraine Lake, I recommend that you go as early as possible! They are both beautiful and worth a visit.

Accommodation

We spent the night at the Lake Louise Campground. It is really clean and well maintained. If you are scared of bears, this is a good campground for you because it is surrounded by an electric fence to keep out large wildlife. There are a lot of ground squirrels though, which are absolutely adorable popping in and out of their various holes.

Day Four

We got our butts up nice and early to make it to Lake Louise before the lot was full. I think we got to the parking lot at about 8:15 am and it was already almost full! We did a nice short walk around part of the lake in our pajamas and took a lot of photos of the lake looking like glass. By the time we left the lake an hour later we could tell they were already turning people away because the lot was full.

The main event of day four was our day hike of the Helen Lake Trail, which is accessed from the Icefields Parkway. Helen Lake Trail is probably the best day hike I have ever done (so far). The views are amazing from start to finish! The forests and alpine vegetation are beautiful throughout. There are small streams that cross the trail (and one big one). The mountain views are breathtaking the whole way up. Near the end, you end up in an alpine meadow filled with beautiful wildflowers and surrounded with 360 degrees of mountains. If you would like to read about the Helen Lake Trail hike in more detail, I have written a full post about it here.

The whole hike only took about four and a half hours, including a break for lunch at the top. I would advise anyone going to the Rockies to do this hike, as long as they have the proper equipment (waterproof hiking shoes are a must). It gets 5 stars from me!

Accommodation

We decided to stay at the Lake Louise Inn for this night because we knew it was our hike day, and because it was the halfway point of our trip. This gave us a chance to shower and get cleaned up before the last two nights of camping. The shower facilities were closed at all our campsites because of Covid-19. Our room had a view of the mountains, which was really nice. It also had a clear view of our bathroom, which was encased by curtain-less glass walls. Definitely a funnier moment of our trip, but also something to consider if you are planning on sharing a room with a friend and not a romantic partner.

Day Five

Breakfast on day five was the one meal we actually ate out the whole trip. We splurged for breakfast at the Lake Louise Inn and it was delicious (but I may be biased because we had only eaten camping food for 4 days).

We dedicated day five to exploring the Icefields Parkway. I recommend setting aside a day for this drive so you can stop at all the lakes, canyons, and viewpoints along the way. You do need to either have a park pass or pay at the toll gate to enter the Parkway because it is a National Park. I won’t go into full detail about all the places we stopped, but I will list the ones that were more than just viewpoints from the highway.

Our first stop was Waterfowl Lakes, which are worth walking around. We happened upon them somewhat by mistake, and they turned out to be really beautiful. The next placed we stopped was Mistaya Canyon, which is very incredible in person, but hard to photograph. We stopped for a look at the Columbia Ice Fields, but there had just been a tragic accident there the day before so it didn’t seem right to still treat it like a tourist attraction. For that reason, I also won’t being putting any photos I took there into the post. We also stopped at Sunwapta Falls and Athabasca Falls which are both very impressive.

Accommodation

We spent this night and the last night at the Wapiti Campground, which is a huge campground right outside of Jaspar. We had another campfire there, and were able to walk to the Athabasca River from our campsite.

Day Six

Day six was a splurge day for us. We went to Maligne Lake and took the boat tour. Parks Canada did a really good job keeping the tour safe in terms of Covid-19. Everyone was required to wear masks and have their temperatures checked before boarding. They also knew how many people were in each party and had the seating on the boat mapped out to keep everyone separated. The boat tour takes you to Spirit Island, which has a view that looks like a postcard. On the road to Maligne Lake we saw the most wildlife of the whole trip. We saw a deer as well as a whole herd of mountain goats!

In the afternoon we did another easy hike, this time right up to a glacier! I highly recommend the Path of a Glacier Trail at Mount Edith Cavell. The hike is only about a half hour each way. The way in is also very steep, so it is again a high amount of effort in a short time for a big reward. At the end of the trail you will be able to see the Angel Glacier, as well as the Edith Cavell Glacier, which feeds into a lake filled with icebergs. Click here if you’d like to learn more about Path of the Glacier Trail and see more pictures.

Day Seven

At the start of our drive home we saw a huge Grizzly bear walking along the highway just outside of Jaspar. This seemed to signify that we had now seen everything we needed to see on this Canadian Rockies trip, and were ready for the long drive home. We decided to do the whole 8 and a half hour drive from Jaspar to Vancouver in one go.

Conclusion

I was definitely thriving on this trip!

I had such an amazing time in the Canadian Rockies. It was my first time going, but it definitely won’t be my last! Comment below if you have any recommendations of where I should go next time, and if you’ve been anywhere I mentioned in my post let me know how your experience went!