Canadian Road Trips: Yoho National Park

Beginning from Calgary, the town of Banff is less than 80 miles west on the Trans Canada Highway, and Lake Louise, the most famous attraction in Banff National Park, is just 35 miles more, still on the TCH. Banff and Lake Louise get four million visitors in an average year, and a large part of the appeal is the close proximity to the largest city in Alberta. What many of those four million people don’t seem to appreciate is the fact that if they were to keep going on Highway 1, just 7 miles beyond Lake Louise and its legendary crowds, they would enter a Wonderland known only to the adventurous, to the curious, to the fortunate few. I’m talking about:

YOHO NATIONAL PARK

Yoho National Park is to British Columbia what Banff National Park is to Alberta: the crown jewel in a dazzling system of protected splendor that draws visitors from every corner of the globe, although Yoho receives just a fraction of the crowds that clog the roads at  better-known Banff. Yoho is easy to find, situated due west of the central section of Banff, and just north of Kootenay. When you travel from Lake Louise to the town of Golden on the Trans-Canada Highway, you drive straight through the middle of the park.  

The name Yoho comes from a Cree Indian word that expresses awe, or amazement. I know that feeling well, and it’s one of the main reasons why I love to travel. When I come upon a place, a viewpoint, a landscape that really and truly stuns me, especially if it’s unexpected, there will be a sharp intake of breath, followed by a brief interlude of dumbstruck silence, when everything just—-stops. I call those my “Oh, Wow!” moments, and Yoho National Park, the place with the odd but resoundingly appropriate name, inspired an abundance of good ones.

Here’s how that works: a sign off the TCH pointed to a place called Emerald Lake, 8 km distant on a paved road. I’d never heard of Emerald Lake, but I was pretty darned sure I wanted to see it, so off down that road we went. Less than five miles along, the first break in the trees offered a glimpse, a flash of improbable color followed by a larger break in the trees that brought me screeching to a halt. There, beyond the spread of roadside wildflowers and a verge of spindly pines was the most extraordinary lake I had ever seen, backed by an ice-clad mountain. I let out an audible gasp, followed by an interlude of dumbstruck silence. “Oh, Wow!” I said at last. Awe and amazement, indeed.

Emerald lake is an ideal spot for canoeing, fishing, and swimming (brrr!), but I’d have to say that the best use for a location this stunning simply has to be romance! The Emerald Lake Lodge is situated in a cove on the lake shore, and the top tier cottages, the rooms with an unimpeded view of that Yoho! jewel of a lake? Beauty of that magnitude breaks down barriers. Bring along the great love of your life, and see what happens next! 

Just as with Banff and Lake Louise, there’s a lot more to Yoho than a single beautiful lake. You can drive to Takakkaw Falls, one of Canada’s highest, along the Yoho Valley Road, just off the TCH near Field (open seasonally). From there, you can hike to Twin Falls and Laughing Falls, both on the Yoho River, or to a number of other stunning destinations. At the south end of the park, you can hike to Wapta Falls, on the Kicking Horse River, following an easy trail that begins quite close to the Hoo Doo Creek campground. There are several popular hikes near Lake O’Hara, a magical region of colorful lakes and beautiful alpine valleys in a fragile, protected ecosystem; to keep it pristine, access to the area is strictly limited, so reservations are required.

There is another attraction in Yoho National Park that has nothing to do with the scenery. The Burgess Shale is a layer of rock exposed in the mountains around Yoho that contains vast deposits of some of the world’s oldest fossils, an array of long-extinct marine life from a sea that covered this part of the world more than 500 million years ago. Their bones, and even the soft parts of their bodies are preserved in stone, down to the smallest detail. The Burgess Shale is fossilized perfection, and has tremendous scientific importance, so much so that the fossil beds have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in their own right, a protected site within a protected site, one of the many amazing things to be found in this extraordinary region. There are guided hikes to the fossil beds, one of the only places in the world where visitors can hold a thing in their hands that dates back more than half a billion years–older than the oldest of the dinosaurs!

Stop in at the Visitor’s Center, right on the Trans-Canada Highway in the tiny town of Field, which is quite close to the geographic center of the 507 square mile National Park.

When you leave Yoho, driving west on Canada Highway One, you leave the main grouping of contiguous National Parks that makes up the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks. You’ll pass through the town of Golden, where you’ll find a variety of options for lodging and dining, and another 35 miles or so beyond Golden, you’ll come to Glacier National Park, and then Mt. Revelstoke National Park, both of which will be covered in more detail (with some great photos!) in a seperate post. Check out the rest of my Canadian Road Trip Series for more information–and a ton of great photographs!

If you live in Calgary or Edmonton, or even Vancouver, a road trip in the Canadian Rockies is simple to arrange. For the rest of us, it takes a bit of planning, but it’s well worth the trouble. You’ll come away with memories that will last a lifetime!

(Unless otherwise noted, all of the images in these posts are my original work, and are protected by copyright. They may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.)

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Canadian Road Trips

A few years ago I wrote a book about road trips in Arizona and New Mexico that's a lot like this website, packed with interesting information, and illustrated with beautiful photographs. Check it out! You can find it on Amazon, and at all other major booksellers.

A few years ago I wrote a book about road trips in that area that’s a lot like this website, packed with interesting information, and heavily illustrated with beautiful photographs. Check it out! You can find it on Amazon, and at all other major booksellers.