Banff National Park

Banff National Park is located in southern Alberta along the shared border with British Columbia in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. This is the same range of mountains that extend down into Colorado and Rocky Mountains National Park. Serving as the Ambassador Park of Canada.

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As Canada’s first and oldest national park, Banff National Park covers an area of 2,564 square miles (6,641 sq km), and reaches all the way to the border of Jasper National Park. The park features glorious mountain landscapes, ice fields, glaciers, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, canyons, tremendous forests, and an abundance of wildlife.

The Banff-Windermere Parkway travels through the national park and up into Jasper National Park and is affectionately known as the Icefields Parkway because of the extensive views of icefields, glaciers and majestic snow-capped mountains.

Because of the latitude and altitude, Banff National Park displays three ecoregions consisting of alpine, montane, and subalpine. Lodgepole pine accounts for the predominant forest in the lower elevations with Engelmann spruce taking over in the higher elevations.

The park is also home to an abundance of wildlife adding to the intrigue and splendor of the Banff area. Sought after wildlife sightings include cougar, grizzly and black bear, lynx, coyote, wolf, red fox, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, caribou, moose, elk, mule deer, beaver, and wolverine.

Bird lovers can have hopes for seeing predator birds that include bald eagles, golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, osprey, and merlin.