Kootenay National Park

Kootenay National Park is located in the southeast corner of Alberta, Canada.  The park covers an area of 543 square miles (1,406 sq km) and is one of Canada’s most popular national parks.

The park is part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site which includes Banff National Park and Jasper National Park in Alberta and Yoho National Park in British Columbia along with three other neighboring provincial parks in British Columbia. 

Kootenay is a land of extreme wilderness comprised of mountains, deep canyons, towering waterfalls, meandering rivers, and forests that blanket the area.  The Canadian Park Service describes Kootenay as “a place of unique contrasts, from icy mountain rivers to steamy hot springs.”

Much of the park is accounted for by the Canadian Rockies as well as parts of the Kootenay and Park mountain ranges.  Deltaform Mountain is the highest summit in the park at 11,234 feet (3,102 m) with elevations dropping down to 3,012 feet (918 m) in the valley of the southwestern entrance into the park.

The lower elevations feature a montane spruce ecosystem with Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, trembling poplar, and western red cedar.  The higher elevations are dominated by Englemann spruce and subalpine fir.

The grizzly bear and black bear are probably the most exciting wildlife sightings, however, the ungulates account for the majority of larger species that you might see including bighorn sheep, moose, mountain goat, mule deer, red deer, and white-tailed deer. Some of the predator species include badger, bobcat, cougar, lynx, timber wolf, and wolverine.

The park is not known for bird species with only 32 species calling the park home.  The rest of the wildlife and wilderness is what draws most people to explore Kootenay National Park.