After a bit of advice for 2018 hols.

Current, very loose, plan is to spend one week around Calgary/Banff/Jasper and a second week on Vancouver Island, just trying to put together a list of things to do and see.

Not everyone rides, so not really looking for cycling spots, but if a couple of XC mincers managed to get a day pass for a ride, where would you do that?

Otherwise what should be on our itinerary? Don’t mind a few honeypots if they are unmissable, but prefer to get off the beaten track a bit too.

Current plans include:
– Plenty of walking: any trail recommendations?
– Some kayaking/whale spotting: looking at some stuff around Telegraph Cove, but anywhere else we should be looking?
– Girls will be riding horses at some point: any recommendation on ranches with good local trails?
– I have a yearning for a couple of day’s heli-hiking/camping: looking at Rockiesheli, but any other experiences welcome?

Also trying to decide whether to hire an RV, any experiences of doing this, hire companies, camping grounds etc. We’re aware that you need to be on the ball with booking and it won’t necessarily be cheaper.

Or we’ll hire a car and use lodges, so any reasonably priced lodges in fabulous locations?

There’s nothing much good about Calgary except the road out, particularly if you head to Jasper – it’s a great drive and you can stop in Banff and Lake Louise then over the Icefields Parkway.

As Calgary is in Alberta and Jasper in BC one-way vehicle rentals are pretty expensive IME.

Float plane from Vancouver to Victoria is great too.

There’s nothing much good about Calgary except the road out

Bit harsh I feel but sometimes understandable. Calgary doesn’t do itself any favors with 16th Ave and the like.

I personally don’t like RV’s. They are slow to drive, hard to park and almost as expensive as using a hotel once camping fees / extra fuel are taken into account.

Lots of previous threads on some of these topics.

Sea kayaking on Vancouver island is a must. It’s a tourist trap but Tofino is good especially Clayoquot sound. I’ve been with this company multiple times.

CMH is the main heli-skiing / heli-hiking company but it’s $$$$

Around Calgary, have a look at Dinosaur Provincial Park, Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.
Dependent on ages in the group, you might look at ‘float the Bow’, Heritage Park or Granary Road too.

I’d be tempted to go north, then do the Icefields Parkway North to South, then a stop somewhere like Golden or Revelstoke, on the way to Vancouver Island. Biking in Revelstoke looks pretty good.

Walking: everywhere in the mountains, I especially like Yoho (Golden is an hour, or camp there), and there’s some good stuff on the island – west coast trail is a few days long though. Pretty much everywhere has 2-5 km hikes just off the road. Meares Island (and maybe Flores Island too, can’t remember) has First Nations’ trails which are highly recommended.

On the island – Coombs for ice cream, Port Alberni for fish & chips, Tofino/Ucluelet for beaches, whales, etc.

I looked at RVs, but ended up spending less money on hire car and AirBnB, and was probably more comfortable for it.

I would imagine Calgary is the place for horses, but know not of these matters. Owt else: ask away.

+1 for Revelstoke, great little place good riding there, one of my favourite places in the world

Good thread on Sunshine Coast here, which is worth considering:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/bc-sunshine-coast

Kayaking at Porpoise Bay, and singletrack that’s generally much more chilled out than a lot of BC riding.

I’d probably choose one or the other out of Vancouver Island and Jasper/Banff rather than trying to do both in the one trip.

Accommodation wise we camped for the most part, but we stayed in an Otentik just outside Jasper which was nice, i’m presuming if you were looking at RVs you’re not looking for super luxury accommodation.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/UnTdHA]20170530_165345[/url] by Elizabeth Gomm, on Flickr

Eagle wing tours for whale watching on Vancouver Island, bear watching out of Tofino is great too.

Canoeing on Maligne Lake if at Jasper. We also really liked Wells Gray and there are lots of canoe camping options there.

Photos from recent trip

We did something similar this summer for our family Holiday of a lifetime. Myself, wife, 2 kids aged 16 and 18 at the time. Booked mostly through trailfinders except three nights on Vancouver island when we stayed at soule creek lodge (yurts on a hilltop with hot tub and amazing food). Flew into Calgary and hired an suv to drive to Vancouver island. Left it there and took the clipper to Seattle where we spent the last three nights. Only rode when we were in whistler.
As above highlights were jasper lake Louise etc. Whale watching boat trip off Vancouver island. Seattle was great too. Worth popping over if you’re in the area. We even really enjoyed Calgary. Just 24 hours there but it was 11/7/17 Canada’s 150th birthday so the stampede was $1.50 entry and we went to the rodeo. Wasn’t planning to when we left england but really glad we did. Free entry to national parks this year as part of the birthday celebrations too. .
We looked at the RV. Option but didn’t fancy being cooped up with the teenagers all the time.
Accommodation was mainly hotels but marmot lodge in jasper was cool. Planetarium on site- we went out into the dark sky and looked at the stars!
Banff seemed too busy. Jasper much better. Vancouver (city) has its good and bad bits. Seems to have a homelessness and mental health/addiction problem but also microbrewery culture etc. Seattle was just better.

2 weeks to do both would be a challenge- we did nearly 3 weeks this summer albeit first week was based with family near Edmonton- we did Banff, lake louse then a few days in panorama, a night in halcyon springs, some time in kelowna for the wine valleys and only got as far a 3 nights in Vancouver before we had to leave so didn’t fit the island in- the scale is massive so lots of driving – awesome trip though

I had visions of doing jasper, whistler and Vancouver island but it would have been too much- just means we need to go back!

Our honeymoon went Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Trans Rockies train to Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Knight Inlet, Vancouver, home.

Knight Inlet was the highlight.

We spent just under three weeks in BC a few years back. Started with a couple of days in Vancouver, Grenville Market, the park, local beer in Gas Town, MEC. Hired a car and headed to Whistler, Jasper (camped), Lake Louise, Banff (camped), Kamloops/Sun Peaks resort and then over to Vancouver island for a week for more driving and whale watching. Did a few hours riding at Sun Peaks.

Whale watching and bear watching at tofino , there is an airfield at golden we did a plane ride over the rockies from there, awsome place

Some great stuff for me to look at there, thanks. 😀

Know we’re trying to cram a lot into 2 weeks and we’ll only scratch the surface, but that’s what I’ve been given to work with.

We’re flying into Calgary, but planned to return there after the first week and fly to Nanaimo on the island, will we miss too much good stuff doing this and should be looking at driving across to Vancouver then? We were thinking this would just be too much time driving?

RV option seems like it really has little or no benefits then.

Revelstoke and Tofino both come up multiple times… noted.

Float plane sounds great, all our flights are wheeled currently (Port Hardy back to Vancouver from the island), so will look at ways to fit this in if we can.

Had seen CMH, def a bit too spendy for a multi-day trip.

What’s the best resource for planning walks? Found some stuff on outdooractive, but are there guidebooks worth looking at or it’s not really necessary? We’re competent navigators, so could just get maps, but imagine that would mean buying many maps to cover the various areas?

If you do stay rustic on Vancouver Island, whatever you do, don’t start thinking about these:

I also found the town of Banff to be very very touristy, busy and pretty much a tourist trap when we went last year, it was ok but a bit full on. We used it as our first stop after getting off the flight into Calgary? This year we purposefully avoided it and stayed in Canmore instead. If flying into Calgary look at the flig arrival times IIRc the Air Canada gets in earlier so allows you to be less knackered when getting into a hire car and driving off. Also as mentioned above the driving distances are big and everyone drives really, really slowly so when you see a trip time of five hours on your route planning don’t think you’ll be able to shave half a hour off making progress add half an hour on :D. We had a dodge caravan and a Honda shuttle type vehicles as a hire car, great big people carriers but great for just chucking stuff in with no fannying about (two full sussers, empty evoc bags, holdalls, rucksacks, assorted carrier bags of food and other crap).

Canada is really great and you’ll have a gas, I think the Mrs is planning for us to go back next year as well.

SaxonRider, there aren’t any grizzlies on Vancouver Island (or at least not a breeding population, only a handful that swim across the straight). There are however wolves and cougars. HTH 😉

If landing in Calgary, I would try and drive out of Calgary as quick as the traffic on Deerfoot permits!

Have a look at Fernie – it has a lift assited bike park in the Summer and fantastic network of local trails. You can pick up a guidebook in local shops.

You should also be able to fly to Vancouver from Cranbrook to avoid having to head back to Calgary.

Right OP, we spent 3 weeks in Alberta this summer:

1. Flew to Edmonton via Iceland and spent a few days with relatives
2. Picked up a mahoosive campervan (http://www.fraserway.com/) from a site near the airport.
3. Drove to Jasper, staying at Whistlers campground.
4. Drove down the Icefields Parkway to Lake Louise
5. Drove the back road to Banff, staying at Tunnel Mountain Campground.
6. Drove back to Edmonton, via Calgary

All of it was brilliant. Jasper is a lovely little town with out of this world mountain biking. There are loads of waymarked leisure trails too, which my family liked. You can hire bikes in town – I bagged a nice Heckler for not a huge amount of money. There’s a cable car up Whistlers mountain, well worth doing, and it’s lovely up at Maligne Lake. The Jasper brew pub sells excellent beer.

Lake Louise is spectacular – and Moraine Lake is even better. There are nice, easy waymarked trails that get you well away from the tourist hordes. There’s not much in the village itself, and car parks fill up very early. The skiing cable car runs in the summer and is worth a trip.

Banff was cool. More to do in the town, we also went canoeing and swimming locally. Canmore isn’t far and has a proper trail centre with a mix of proper mtb and leisure. The hot springs pool is nice.

I really liked having the RV – it’s not really any cheaper than motels but is much more practical with preparing meals etc. Canadian towns have plenty of RV parking areas. Canadian campgrounds have very few facilities so an RV with its own toilet, shower and kitchen is the way to go IMO.

Oh, and we saw

A good little hike is the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. You would need to book now as it is popular so numbers have to be limited. We did it in about 5 days but some like to take their time and do it in 7 to 10. It’s a challenging walk and you need to be fit and able to carry all your food and camping kit but it is one of the world’s most spectacular walks. If you don’t want to commit to the full walk you can walk in and back from the northerly trailhead, the path is much better and you can camp overnight.

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/bc/pacificrim/activ/activ6a

http://www.westcoasttrailbc.com/trail_guidebook_map.htm

Canmore is only an hour drive from Calgary and well worth at least a visit. Banff & Lake Louise are within an hour of Canmore.

Vancouver Island is lovely – stayed just outside Parksville this summer. Tofino is a good three to four hour drive from Parksville, according to my b-I-l, so we went to Campbell River for our whale watching tour.

Didn’t see any bears, wolves, coyotes, moose or cougars but did see plenty of eagles

Oh, and we saw

Cut off in my prime!

We saw two black bears, fairly close up. Which was very cool.

We did a road trip from Vancouver to Calgary a year ago. We hired an RV from Frazerway RV who were very good.

Places to stay? We liked Canmore, Golden and Kelowna. There are loads of place to stay but do plan as the distance are big and take along time to travel, Kelowna to Jasper took us 2 days!!

We loved the countryside but not so much the towns / cities as they are american in style so dont have a natural centre to wander round and explore like european cities do. I would recommend getting out and about on foot, bike, horse etc.

I would skip Lake Louise, far too many people. Instead go a few miles up the road to Moraine Lake, equally stunning but a fraction of the people. There is a trail you can ride / hike that starts a couple of miles from Lake Louise that takes you to moraine lake. Its an out and back but was a great way to approach the lake.

Our route was Vancouver, Kelowna, Jasper, Golden, Canmore Calgary. We did 2000km

When we went in May/June we flew (floatplane) from Vancouver over to Victoria and did whale watching.
You can buy this as a package.
I spotted Killer whales from the plane as we were flying quite low due to rain clouds. Ended up guiding our boat right to them by explaining where I had seen them.

I would skip Lake Louise, far too many people. Instead go a few miles up the road to Moraine Lake, equally stunning but a fraction of the people.

Not in the school holidays! We were there by 8am and the car park was full. However, walk for half a mile towards Consolation and there’s hardly anyone at all.

Lake Louise had a shuttle bus service operating from the village, which worked very well.

I found some good riding when I had a couple of hours to spare around Banff and also went of an evening club ride in Hinton (west of Jasper) while I was out there with my wife ahead of Singletrack6 earlier this year.

I have also done the BC Bike Race a couple of times and Vancouver Island and indeed Vancouver are great as is the North Shore, Whistler, Squamish and the Sunshine Coast.

If you download Trailforks on your phone for BC and Alberta you’ll be easily able to spot the trail areas. This is how I found out about Hinton and the Trail I rode out the hotel door (less than 100 meters away) in Banff.

So Trailforks is my hot tip for riding.

We’re flying into Calgary, but planned to return there after the first week and fly to Nanaimo on the island, will we miss too much good stuff doing this and should be looking at driving across to Vancouver then?

It depends. If you’re driving a loop then that might work (so say Calgary-LakeLouise-Jasper-Edmonton-Calgary) but by the time you’re in Revelstoke (which I agree is a great place) then it’s probably almost worth carrying on.

As others have said don’t underestimate the driving. You could easily spend 2 weeks doing Calgary to Vancouver or 2 weeks doing Vancouver and the Island so doing both means quite a lot of travel either way.

referring to the above

do
canmore – goat trail to banff
lake miniwanka – its quiet lovely for a short walk
hedge pigs restaurant in Field
Golden
Kelowna and the wider wine valley region
summer road Kamloops to Pemberton
Jasper
Squamish
Nelson BC
Lake Moraine
Fernie
Whitefish Montana 🙂

Don’t
Whistler
Calgary
Banff
Lake Louise

Good luck and as noted – its always much longer to get anywhere than you think

regarding bears, when in a campsite un Uclulet, there was a lot of commotion one night.
Turned out they had shot a bear in the campsite and a rather crazy sounding woman was ranting about them shooting it in the back for about an hour keeping us awake.

Also look at westjet for good value flights. Really good value if you dont mind taking your own food and entertainment

More great stuff, you lovely people 😀

Anywhere worth visiting between Kamloops and Vancouver? Just wondering about taking a week to drive from Calgary to Kamloops and then catching a flight to Vancouver to save a bit of time, we could then jump straight on a seaplane to the Island, might that be better than a round trip from/to Calgary?

Ebygomm, just got around to looking at your fab photo’s thanks for sharing, mind me asking where you were in some of the shots that were a bit higher up in the hills? How did you find these routes; maps, books or just from info at the trailheads?

Hoping that we can get up high once or twice. At Moraine Lake for example, how easy would it be finding a way up Tower of Babel? Or Panorama Ridge, guess these are not waymarked, but are the tracks obvious or not so much?

The Okanagan is worth a visit (Kelowna / Penticton) and you can fly from there as well. Vineyards, lovely road riding, hiking / climbing on Skaha bluffs, lakes to swim in etc.

There’s lots of information online with respect to hikes etc and the information places sell maps.

For actual hiking my favorite area is the Yoho valley – spend a day hiking the iceline trail and then have lunch / dinner in Field at the Truffle pig.

Photos from Yoho Valley – 1

Photos from Yoho Valley – 2

I’d then plan on driving to Rogers Pass and doing another hike in that area. You can certainly get high fast there on well marked trails (The Asulkan hut for example if there aren’t any bear restrictions). Then hanging out in Revelstoke for a couple of days.

As others have said Banff / Lake Louise is very touristy and there are better spots with less crowds / tat.

There is a lot of Canada and so there is a real risk of constantly being on the move and trying to cram stuff in.

Kamlopps to Vancouver was a horrible long drive. We actually drove kamloops-Vancouver-whistler in one long day as the wildfires had closed the direct route to whistler. Spent a long time crawling along the motorway. I’d avoid that drive if at all possible.

Apart from the initial stages of picking up a left hand drive auto from the hire place I found the driving pretty good. Roads outside of the cities very quiet. we did manage to miss a rock slide on the Jasper road and did get “stuck” behind quite a few RVs but the scenery is just mind blowing. The scale is really hard to appreciate. We drove 3000 miles and must of that was done in under two weeks.

Probably the best bit for me was camping at Jasper and the wildlife. A number of trails were closed due to angry bear encounters. The Mrs loved our final day as there was a massive parade in Victoria, the museum was pretty good, I liked the MEC and we went on a rib to a large pod of killer whales. It rounded it off nicely. We could have easily have stayed longer.

We were there early in the season so although the weather was great a lot of trails were still shut due to snow. The high up photos I think you’re referring too are actually just a walk we did from the gondola near Jasper. There is a walking route up there but was closed when we were there. We did have a book, will have to look up the title.

I really enjoyed the walk up we did at Squamish too, that was just something I’d found online.

Mostly we just looked up routes at the visitor centres, at the time of year we were there local knowledge of trail conditions is valuable.

Hmm, missed the airport in Kelowna, even more interesting then.

Great photo’s sweaman2, Presidents and the glacier look great.

So it could look something like Calgary->Canmore->Lake Minnewanka->Lake Louise->Field->Golden->Revelstoke->Kelowna – only 628Km to drive that, so plenty of time out of the car. Just Jasper missing from that really.

Sorry but lake minnewanka always makes smile. The boat tour around it is quite good though.

lake minnewanka – yep I passed by there many times with a smile but was at a loose end for a morning and it was close so had a look – its really pretty and worth a side trip.

A tip – you will drive through the park pass systems – you can’t miss it – theres an option to drive around and not pay which I would always take, I was caught out one time so had to pay.

I would advise missing Lake Louise at all costs – Moraine is far better and more likely to see a black bear on the roadside in my experience

Hiking (as they call it) maps and recommendations everywhere – ask your waitress – as long as you can find the trail head you will be fine

Don’t buy a bear bell just make some noise occasionally along the trails, You can smell the bears but rarely see them.

Also remember the height – you wont be used to the thin air – so pays to take plenty of water and perhaps some headache pills – take ascents more easily than you normally would and allow plenty of time for those less able than you

Last couple of questions.

We were looking to visit first 2 weeks of September, but understand it’s Labour Day on the first Monday, September 3rd next year. Is that weekend just going to be mad busy then, are we better going a week later?

If we did though, we’d be on Vancouver Island from 14th Sept, is that too late in the season? Looks like a few of the kayaking companies have dates up to very early September, but not beyond, so wondering if they are starting to shut down for the winter by then?

particularly if you head to Jasper – it’s a great drive and you can stop in Banff and Lake Louise then over the Icefields Parkway.

It’s a horrid massively exploited overly busy nasty road ime. Lake Louise is a hole. Banff’s the only redeaming feature imo.

If going to to Vancouver island then yes telegraph cove is awesome.but the massively under valued part of BC is the way out West between Prince Rupert and Jasper. Lovely little towns that are still Canadian , set in amazing backdrops heading towards the Rockies .

The icefields parkway is what you see on post cards it’s beautiful but it’s a one trick pony that’s been spoilt by over population and litter.

By September you’ll probably find telegraph coves shut – massively seasonal.

We were on Vancouver Island towards the end of September a couple of years ago. We didn’t kayak but i remember seeing groups going out. I don’t remember anything being closed because of the time of year. In Victoria the low season prices for the hotel we stayed a couple of nights in didn’t start until October.

Weather was decent too, this was September 26

[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/ebygomm/albums/72157659054830420]Pacific Northwest 2015[/url]

[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/83246699@N00/albums/72157659439003752] More from the same trip[/url]