Icefields Parkway: Lake Louise to Columbia Icefield

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Lake Louise

   Lake Louise is a lake the colour of milky turquoise, set under a wall of rock and a hanging glacier, and it is one of the most photographed places in Canada. The colour comes from fine rock flour, ground by the glacier and carried into the water, which reflects the blue-green part of the spectrum. At about 1,500 metres, the lake is surrounded by the peaks of the Rockies, with Mount Victoria and the Victoria Glacier at its head, and the old château at the foot, a large hotel that has stood here in various forms since the 1890s. The lake was named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, a daughter of Queen Victoria, and the province of Alberta also bears her name.

   Read the complete Lake Louise write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Lake Louise is where the day begins. Next is Bow Lake.

2. 2. Bow Lake

   Bow Lake is the first of the big, quiet beauties on the northern half of the Icefields Parkway, and it comes at you from the right as the road climbs, a long sheet of pale green water backed by the grey rock and white ice of the Crowfoot Glacier. The lake lies at about 1,900 metres and is the source of the Bow River, which runs out of it, east past Lake Louise, Banff and Calgary, and on to the prairies. So the water that sits here, still and cold, will in a few days be in the middle of a city. The thought makes a pause on the shore more interesting.

   Read the complete Bow Lake write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Bow Lake comes up about 39 km into the recorded legs. Next is Peyto Lake.

3. 3. Peyto Lake

   Peyto Lake is the colour that people mean when they say glacial turquoise, and in the flesh the blue-green is so intense that photographs seem to have been tampered with. The colour comes from rock flour, fine particles of stone ground off the mountain by the Peyto Glacier and carried into the lake in meltwater. The particles stay in suspension and scatter the light, so the water turns a luminous, milky blue that changes with the season, the sunlight and the amount of melt. It is at its most vivid in July and early August.

   Read the complete Peyto Lake write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 46 km into the recorded legs you reach Peyto Lake. Next is Saskatchewan Crossing.

4. 4. Saskatchewan Crossing

   Saskatchewan River Crossing is the one place on the Icefields Parkway where you can buy fuel, a meal and a bed between Lake Louise and Jasper, a distance of about two hundred and thirty kilometres, and so it has a role far bigger than its size. It is a junction more than a settlement, with a service station, a motel and a restaurant, set among the peaks at a meeting of three rivers: the North Saskatchewan, the Mistaya and the Howse. The three streams flow together here, braided over wide gravel flats, and their colours, from milky grey to green, mix in the current.

   Read the complete Saskatchewan Crossing write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Saskatchewan Crossing, late in the day. Next is Columbia Icefield.

5. 5. Columbia Icefield

   A raindrop that lands on the Columbia Icefield has three possible destinations, and it is hard to find a better place to say so. From the snowy dome at the heart of this ice, meltwater drains to the Pacific by the Columbia, to the Arctic by the Athabasca and Mackenzie, and to Hudson Bay via the Saskatchewan. The icefield itself sits astride the Continental Divide, a plateau of ice some hundreds of metres deep, feeding half a dozen big glaciers, of which the Athabasca is the one you can see from the highway.

   Read the complete Columbia Icefield write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Columbia Icefield. That is the ride.