Banff Travel Guide - How to Travel Banff, Jasper & Yoho!

there's this place in Canada where you'll find rocky mountain peaks turquoise glacial lakes and some of the most scenic drives in the world all of these things come together along the borders of Alberta and British Columbia where you're gonna find Banff Jasper and Yoho three of Canada's most beautiful national parks [Music] it's a field man again so to give you a bit of a backstory behind this trip earlier this year it had dawned on me that I hadn't seen my buddies from high school in quite some time last month we a touch base and we realized that we all had some free time coming at the end of July so we decided why not make a road trip out of it do some camping and go and explore one of the most beautiful places in the world that just so happens to be a couple hours from our house this is going to be a video of that trip detailing how we went about traveling dev Jasper and yoho national park we stoked those cafe we're in a sick Dodge Caravan minivan with stolen go seats so we have tons of room for everything so it's not only a soccer mom man it's a boy's van so I'm gonna say boys we picked the van up early in the morning in Kelowna BC and then we drove six hours until we hit yoho national park where we would do some exploring and camp our first night we ended up arriving in Yoho just after 3:00 p.m. which was a bit later than we would have liked but it still worked our first stop was right after we entered Yoho and that was a 20-minute leisurely hike down to wap des falls making our way through the forest we were eventually greeted with a massive blue river rolling over a huge waterfall in the middle of the mountains I mean this is not a bad first stop after taking in some of the beautiful views at walk des Falls which we're going to be doing a lot of this trip we ended up hopping back in the minivan and heading over to the iconic emerald lake Emerald Lake is part of Yoho National Park and it's that Lake that you've probably seen like five million photos of on Instagram this picturesque Blue Lake is surrounded by gorgeous mountains and some hiking trails now the dudes and I did not partake as we had other places to be but we did hear good things about the trails we spent some time wandering around the lake checking out the Emerald Lake Lodge once again taking the beautiful views and launching our friend Zach go for a swim it's a glacial lake you probably don't want to swim in there after emerald late we were ready to head to our final stop in Yoho National Park and that was going to be the Padgett firehud the Padgett fire Hut is a tiny wooden shack located on top of a mountain with some insane views of the surrounding ranges and lakes what makes the fire hut so cool is how isolated you feel when you're up there sitting high above the valley lakes in line with the other snow-capped peaks this makes for such an unreal spot to catch the sunset now to get to the pageant fire Hut is fairly simple first off you're gonna head over to the Great Divide Lodge in Yoho National Park once you're there you can park your car in their parking lot so long as you make sure to drop off your keys at the hotel reception they'll hold your car keys for you while you're hiking and once you get back down off the trail you can just pick them back up after sorting out the car situation the dudes and I we threw some dinner in our backpacks packed up what we need to hang out there for sunset and began climbing the 1 and a half hour hike to the top the hike isn't too bad actually there is a fair bit of incline on the way up I mean obviously we're climbing pretty high but even if you hike occasionally you should be fine I don't know there's just something about this spot that I find really special having hiked up a mountain to be isolated in a tiny wooden shack where you can watch the sunset while cooking some dinner and hanging out with some friends it's a really good time I really really enjoyed the spot and if you're passing through Yoho National Park is one of those things that you cannot miss yesterday's activities really tired us out after a good night's sleep we woke up early in banff ready to take on our next adventure filled day we have made it here to the town of Bamm in Alberta now my friends and I ended up camping at tunnel Mountain which is the main campsite located just outside of Banff city centre but it is extremely extremely hard to get a reservation at without booking very far in advance we honestly hit a stroke of luck we had no plans going into benef and we happened to secure a spot there for two days but the park ranger who sold it to us told us that we are like beyond lucky for those of you looking to come to Banff make sure that you're booking for in event and trying to find that spot so here we are on our next adventure we are hitting up Lake Louise this is so popular I'm sure you've seen pictures of it before it's like iconic in Banff that claims to saw a grizzly bear on her drive here I did and I'm afraid now it's only been about one minute of driving since I thought and it was Velociraptor a good friend you've probably heard of this Lake as it's arguably one of the most famous lakes in Canada and rightfully so it is absolutely gorgeous [Music] now it's kind of unfortunate because it is so beautiful it's also extremely popular and with that there are tons of crowds you can definitely go earlier in the morning or later in the evening if you want to dodge those crowds which I recommend doing because the crowds like that alone made it not my favorite stop that we have it's so beautiful you have to see it if you're in bath you can't skip it but Lake Louise because of the crowds was not my favorite after Lake Louise we headed back towards Banff stopping at Johnston Canyon Johnston Canyon is another one of these super iconic spots in Banff National Park it's a large Canyon located in the mountains with some waterfalls running through it and the park has built a series of paths and walkways so you can explore it relatively easily we ended up taking a path that followed up the canyon over waterfalls through the forest eventually bringing you to the end where the biggest waterfall in Johnston Canyon is visible all in all the round trip hike took us about an hour and was a super cool way to explore the area it's our third day exploring Banff and today we are waking up early it was 3:45 in the morning we all got up and we packed into the minivan and headed to one of our favorite spots on the entire trip for sunrise and that was Maureen Lake now you probably know but getting up before 4:00 a.m. is extremely painful but trust me in this situation is definitely worth it Maureen Lake is situated in the valley of 10 Peaks which is located about 14 kilometres into the mountains from Lake Louise this glacial lake is bright blue surrounded by trees and snow-capped mountains is honestly the perfect place for sunrise Jason dude where we at some lake moraine and this water is so blue are you usually up at this hour never was it worth it yeah million dollar pictures here yeah dude it's pretty pretty you don't see this every day for sure it's pretty crazy when you're there and the Sun begins to rise and it shines down the valley it begins to light up the peaks surrounding the lake in a bright orange color it's unreal on top of the gorgeous sunrise another huge perk about being there early is that it's not crowded Maurine Lake is a massive destination in Banff and being so close to Lake Louise it gets extremely busy early on in the day they actually end up closing the road to get there fairly early in the morning which means the only way in is going to be via shuttle so I don't know in my opinion it's worth it to bite the bullet get up early and catch one of the most magnificent sunrises you'll see there after catching sunrise at Moraine Lake we hop back on the highway and then took the exit towards the icefields pkway which is consistently rated as one of the most beautiful drives in the world [Music] show the icefields pkway is a 230 kilometer stretch of highway that connects Banff and Jasper we knew that we wanted to see Jasper so we took this highway to get there but we definitely did not understand how beautiful this highway actually was if you do the icefield straight through you can probably do that stretch of road in about three and a half hours but my friends and I took about ten the cool part of the highway is that no matter where you looked at any time you're going to be greeted with an insane view seriously if I stop for pictures every time I wanted to take a picture I think that we might still be on the ice field so I guess there's a bear out here and yeah it's like causing complete traffic jam on the road because everyone's like wants to see it oh dude [Music] on top of the amazing 360 degrees views for 230 kilometers the icefields pkway also has a ton of destinations that you're gonna want to stop at and when I say a ton of places you're going to have to pick and choose they're seriously too many to stop at every single one but that goes for all the places that we've been so far it's so beautiful they have to make some compromises one of our favorite stops along the way was peyto lake peyto lake is super well-known and it actually makes a really good stop for lunch from the parking lot you can actually hike up to the viewpoint in about 20 minutes and you're greeted with this bright blue lake surrounded by super tall cascading mountains now to the best of my knowledge you're not going to be able to get down to peyto lake at least not easily but from the viewpoint it's in a valley and you get a super cool view of it another spot that I absolutely loved was Horseshoe Lake and the cool thing about Horseshoe Lake is that is not known by many people Horseshoe Lake is located just outside of Jasper and it makes for a really good swimming spot we hung out there for a bit Mike and I did some swimming we jumped off some small cliffs and then Mike decided you know what he's gonna do a 50-foot flip Joe Horseshoe Lake is pretty cool this is definitely one of my favorite stops along the ice fields after our extended trip up the ice fields Parkway we ended up in Jasper which is a supercool little town about 10 minutes from Jasper City Center is a lake called Pyramid Lake which is where we decided that we're going to have our picnic dinner as a pretty good spot honestly if we could do it over again and we had this same timeline I think that only would have camped one night in Bev and we would have Kemp the other night here in Jasper that would have given us some more time to explore and see what Jasper had to offer but because we drove up there we spent so much time on the ice fields which you definitely need to do by the time you get there the Sun is setting and then you have to drive all the way back to Banff which is another like 4 hour straight drive I mean that's why you're watching this video and I did the trip it was definitely a mistake on my part we should have camped there but hey 11 you learned it was still a super fun time and there it is dudes that is how you spend 3 epic days on the road exploring bent Jasper and Yoho National Park as I said earlier there is honestly so much to see in these parks we had to make so many compromises and when you're there you'll see the same thing there's literally signs for waterfalls and hikes and lakes like left and right no matter where you look and you can't possibly do everything I mean that's why these are national parks they truly are something special and I'll definitely be going back for years to come with new things to see each and every time with that being said though my friends Steve Brett and David all helped me put this itinerary together and they've been visiting BAFF Jasper and Yoho for years so they know what they're talking about I'll put all their links in the description thank you so much guys you guys helped me plan an amazing trip for my friends and I thanks so much for watching dudes I appreciate every single one of you so much and I'll see you all in [Music]

Channel: Noahvde

Views: 318,652

Rating: 4.9636898 out of 5

Keywords: noahvde, noah van der eerden, kelowna, vancouver, arkmedia, ark media, ark media house, How to travel banff jasper and yoho national park, how to travel banff, how to travel jasper, how to travel yoho, banff, canada, british columbia, alberta, national park, yoho national park, jasper national park, icefields parkway, banff national park, banff travel guide, yoho travel guide, jasper travel guide, lake louise, moraine lake, johnston canyon, calgary

Id: I61VrHcafaM

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2019