If you're thinking about booking a trip to Moraine Lake this fall, don't there's no reason to wait. The Moraine Lake access road is schedueled for closure on October 12, and once that happens, that's it until next June, no exceptions for guides, shuttles, or anyone else. That means there's only 30 days left to get there this year! Moraine Lake and the Valley of the Ten Peaks, this view is off the table after Thanksgiving Wait, How Does a Lake Close? Fair question, and the ho

You know the rut has properly started when the elk stop looking bored. All summer they stand around town cropping grass like oversized deer, and then sometime in late August a switch flips. Suddenly bulls in the valley are bugling in parking lots, sparring with parked cars, and trailing cows across the golf course like the rest of us don't exist. And to be fair, to them, we don't. That's the elk rut in Banff and Canmore right now, and it's going to hold through October. Rut s

Most true alpine hikes near Banff make you earn the view, usually a couple thousand feet of switchbacks before the trees even open up. That's the real barrier for a lot of people, not fitness or ambition, just the climb itself. Sunshine Meadows is the exception. The gondola takes you straight to 2,300 metres, so you're standing in real alpine terrain, above the treeline, before you've broken a sweat. It opens that kind of scenery up to hikers who'd never otherwise get anywher