CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 408 km loop that starts and ends near Banff, about 6 h 40 of riding. The stops in between: Kootenay National Park, Radium Hot Springs, Golden and Yoho National Park. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 92 km this is Icefields Parkway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Banff in the morning has a particular feel: cold air coming off the glacier-fed Bow River, mist clinging to Mount Rundle, and the smell of pine and woodsmoke from kitchens. The town sits in the heart of the Canadian Rockies at about 1,400 metres, hemmed in by peaks, and it exists because of hot springs. In the 1880s railway workers found warm water at Cave and Basin, and the government made the area a reserve that grew into Canada's first national park.
Read the complete Banff write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Banff is where the day begins. Next is Kootenay National Park.
There is a place on this road where the colour of the ground changes from grey to rust. Kootenay National Park, on the western side of the Continental Divide, is the quieter neighbour of Banff, and Highway 93 South threads through it for about ninety kilometres from the Vermilion Pass to the hot springs at Radium. The stretch around Marble Canyon is the heart of it, with a deep, narrow limestone gorge and, close by, the Paint Pots, where iron-rich springs stain the earth ochre, and where the First Nations once gathered pigment to trade.
Read the complete Kootenay National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kootenay National Park comes up about 86 km into the recorded legs. Next is Radium Hot Springs.
You smell Radium Hot Springs before you see it, or so it seems: faint sulphur, wood smoke, hot tarmac. The village sits where the Kootenay valley opens to the broad Columbia, and the road from the north drops through Sinclair Canyon, a dramatic notch in red rock, so narrow that the highway squeezes through with barely a shoulder. It is the best entrance to any town on the loop.
Read the complete Radium Hot Springs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 137 km into the recorded legs you reach Radium Hot Springs. Next is Golden.
Golden sits in the Columbia Valley at the meeting of the Kicking Horse and Columbia rivers, in the shadow of two great ranges, the Rockies on the east and the Purcells and Selkirks on the south and west. The town is small, about four thousand people, but it is the largest settlement for a hundred kilometres in any direction, and it acts as a hub for riders on the Trans-Canada Highway. It has been a railway town since the 1880s, when the Canadian Pacific Railway came through the Kicking Horse Pass, and it still has the feel of a place where trains are part of the landscape, with long freights rumbling through the valley day and night.
Read the complete Golden write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Golden, about halfway. Next is Yoho National Park.
Yoho is a Cree word expressing awe, and it was well chosen. The park occupies a deep, glaciated valley on the western side of the Continental Divide in British Columbia, and it packs in more big-mountain drama per kilometre than most places in the Rockies. Waterfalls fall from hanging valleys, glaciers glitter high above the trees, and the Kicking Horse River runs milky green with rock flour through a canyon of pale limestone.
Read the complete Yoho National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoho National Park sits at 232 km, late in the day. Next is Banff.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Banff write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 408 km.
Banff → Kootenay National Park is 86 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kootenay National Park → Radium Hot Springs is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Radium Hot Springs → Golden is 104 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Golden → Yoho National Park is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoho National Park → Banff is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.