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Larissa Bodniowycz here.  Just back from a 6-day girls hiking and camping trip among the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Canada.  Banff absolutely lives up to the hype and is virtually guaranteed to be a good trip.  Here are three tips that will make your trip even more enjoyable:

Reservations, Reservations, Reservations!

Banff is a small town but a popular summer hiking destination with an extremely limited hiking season.  This means limited options that fill-up early.  I love being able to be spontaneous but this is one destination where you really do need to make reservations, and make them early.

Banff National Park’s approximately 9,700 campsites book-up early in the season.  I booked our first four days at the campsite in June for our late July trip and at the time there were a number of campgrounds that were already completely full.  We talked to a number of fellow travelers during the trip that were either unable to obtain a campground when they tried to reserve the day-of or had to settle on one night in the park when they wanted more.

Between about 6:30PM and 8:30PM Banff Town was absolutely packed and with no dinner reservations we were turned away from a number of restaurants or given long (over an hour wait times) which we declined.  The alternative, which we took advantage of for Park on our last day, is to go to dinner very early, like 5:00PM early.  It’s still busy but possible to get in to even some of the more popular places.

Start Early!

I am not a morning person so when I say start early it means it’s worth it.  Again, Banff is a popular summer hiking destination and some of its highlights like Lake Louise are so popular that they garner Disney World-like crowds by afternoon and require shuttling from overflow parking lots.  We arrived at Lake Louise a bit before 9AM and the parking lot was already getting close to full.

On average, we woke up between 6AM and 7AM and were hiking between 8AM and 9AM.  By starting early each day, we avoided parking headaches, massive crowds, and got to enjoy the serenity of stretches of trail all to ourselves, even on popular routes.  For example, we got to experience Lake Helen and Lake Katherine with no one else there!  Eventually others came.

Almost every day on our hike down to our car we’d comment about how glad we were that we started early as we passed lots of hikers and even saw waiting lines at some of the viewpoints near the trailhead, like the falls at Johnston Canyon.

I cannot overemphasize starting early but if you accidentally oversleep and find yourself overwhelmed with crowds your second best bet is to continue to walk a little past the main attraction.  There’s a weird psychology that causes a lot of people to simply stop at the main viewpoint and do no further exploring.  To go back to the Lake Louis example: when we returned from our hike, the viewpoint in front of the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise was a zoo but just a ¼ a mile (apx .4 km) further down the path around the lake, there were people but no congestion and you could still catch killer views of the lake. 

Another way to escape the crowds is to take a slightly different route or just go further than the average hiker.  The scenery everywhere is fantastic and there is something particularly magical about having stretches of trail all to yourself.

Buy the Bear Spray!

Yes, it’s expensive and you can’t take it with you on a plane but it’s also worth it.  Bear encounters not only happen, they are common during the summer “berry season,” and not isolated to isolated areas of trail.  A family of four, just one hiking group ahead of us, saw a bear on the well-traveled Johnson Canyon trail just a few minutes after crossing from the paved trail to the dirt trial.  Still skeptical if it’s “worth it?”  Check out the weekly Banff, Yoho, and Kooteney Weekly Bear Report  or one of the many articles like this one about bear encounters in Banff National Park.

If you’re planning a trip to Banff, you might also be interested in my thoughts on where to stay in Banff, everything I packed for Banff, and exactly what we did on our 7 day trip to Banff, or in scoping out flights with my fav. flight search tool, Skyscanner: