Kootenay to Yoho / Silverton Falls
Canadian Rockies Road Trip, Day 8 | Driving from Kootenay National Park to Yoho National Park | Hiking to Silverton Falls in Banff National Park | June 2023
On Sunday morning, we left our campsite in Kootenay National Park and drove a few miles down the road to the trailhead for one last easy hike before leaving the park. We hiked a bit of the Simpson River Trail, hoping to make it to the ‘Red Chairs’, and while we didn’t go the whole way we enjoyed the views of the surrounding mountains, the bright blue river, and the wildflowers. After our hike, we made breakfast at the empty trailhead before finishing the drive through the park, ending with crossing the continental divide, which is also the border between Kootenay NP in British Columbia to Banff NP in Alberta.
I’m pretty sure Banff was originally the reason why we started dreaming of coming to the Canadian Rockies, thanks to all I saw and read about the blue lakes, jagged peaks, and glaciers throughout the park. However, over the years it’s become super popular, and now this year in order to see some of the most popular sites during the summer — Lake Louise and Morraine Lake — you have to take a shuttle and can no longer drive there yourself. Since the shuttles aren’t dog friendly, we decided to pass on these places for this trip. We had already decided that this would be the first of hopefully many trips to this area, and we hope to come back in different seasons and hopefully with more experience in climbing to hike some of the peaks.
But since we were driving through, we wanted to try to do something in Banff, so we drove over to Johnston Canyon. Upon arriving at the trailhead, we were met by way more cars than expected, and in the interest of keeping Charlotte comfortable we decided to find a less busy trail. That led us to Silverton Falls, near Castle Junction. It was only a mile long round-trip hike to the falls, but this trailhead is mainly advertised as the start of a longer hike up to a lake, so most people seem to overlook it. This made it the perfect quiet hike for Charlotte (and us) to enjoy.
The trail started out easy on a wide path going through a forest, then after breaking off from the lake trail it met up with the stream, and then switchbacked a couple times up to an overlook of the falls, and a nice vista of the mountains in the opposite direction. The waterfall was a very large, multi-tiered, that was very impressive despite being a little difficult to see the entirety of from the trail. I’d say we enjoyed the mountain views in the opposite direction just as much!
After making it back to the car, we had some snacks and then drove North on 1A before meeting up with the TransCan Highway in Lake Louise. Along the way, we stopped at Morant’s Curve lookout to enjoy more mountain and river views. The clouds were obscuring most of the peaks, and we joked that they’d only reveal themselves to us when we were truly ready to hike them. We knew there was so much we were missing in Banff, but we agreed to get an earlier start mid-week to do one more hike in the park, and to of course come back someday with more strategic planning. We weren’t disappointed that we weren’t camping here, however, as we looked and saw that just 2 nights in a campground in Banff National Park was $90 CA — about as much as we spent camping on this entire month long trip!
And so we left Banff behind and took the TransCan Highway back into British Columbia, and into Yoho National Park where we planned to spend the next couple days. Unfortunately our first impressions of the park weren’t great, as the highway had a lot of construction which limited some of the stops we could make. Thankfully it would be redeemed in our minds the next day. We decided to camp in the park in a first come-first served site for two nights, which was thankfully less than half what we would’ve spent in Banff. It was nice to have the same spot for two nights and not have to think about where we’d camp the next day, so we were fully able to enjoy our time in Yoho.
We saw that the road that our campground was on continued on for many miles up into the Yoho Valley and eventually ended up at a waterfall, which sounded like a great way to spend the rest of the day… But unfortunately this was one time when coming to the park during the “shoulder season” did not play in our favor. The road was closed until June 15, and today was June 11, so we would narrowly miss the opening – and while walking the road to the falls was very tempting, 8 miles round trip seemed like a bit much this late in the day. Oh well, we drove the road as far as we could up to a lookout of a confluence between two rivers, and took a few short walks around the campground. We didn’t have to work hard for a view — we had stunning mountain views just from our campsite, and enjoyed a beautiful sunset reflected on the peaks.
