Outdoor, distanced getaways to the mountains (basically in our backyards!) is one of the few vacation-like experiences we can still safely do within the province during this time.
We’re really lucky we’re so close to the Canadian Rockies. Truly! So if you get a chance to head out safely this summer, please feel free to Copy my Itinerary from my recent visit to Canmore / Kananaskis, hosted by Tourism Canmore Kananaskis and their wonderful partners.
You can also check out my other travel guides from the area:
- Know Before You Go To The Blackshale Suspension Bridge and Kananaskis Lake
- E-Biking Calgary and Canmore / Banff, Alberta
- Swing, Rope, and Paddle Adventure at Johnson Lake Alberta (Banff National Park)
- 7 Things To Do in Canmore, Alberta
- A Few Things To Do in Canmore, Alberta
- Exploring Alberta’s Bubble Lake (Abraham Lake)
- Rocky Mountain Cross-Country Ski Trails and Bubble Lakes
- Everything you Need to Know to Visit Moraine Lake and Hike Larch Valley in Banff National Park
- View all of my Alberta Travel Guides
Thank you to Tourism Canmore Kananaskis for hosting my April 2021 visit to the area.
Please note: don’t travel even within the province if you’re sick. Stay home if you’re sick! And if you are an Albertan exploring within Alberta, please abide by current COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Copy my Itinerary: A Week in Canmore / Kananaskis, Alberta
Where to eat, adventure, and stay in the Canadian Rocky Mountains
Monday
Drive into Canmore, Alberta. From Edmonton, it’s a 4-hour drive. From Calgary, it’s a 1-hour drive.
Where to stay:
- Rundle Cliffs Lodge at Spring Creek Vacations
- Rundle Cliffs Lodge at Spring Creek Vacations is a stunning spot to stay in Canmore, bordered by two creeks and surrounded by the incredible views Canmore is famous for. At this home-away-from-home you’ll be able to view the entire mountain Ehagay Nakoda Massif, a multi-peaked massif south of Canmore showing Ship’s Prow, Mt. Lawrence Grassi, Miner’s Peak and Ha Ling.
- Get this view (pictured below) from the living room, balcony, bedroom, or outside the main entrance of the building. Breathtaking!
- From Rundle Cliffs Lodge it’s also an easy walk to Canmore’s Main Street, but also feels secluded and tucked enough away from Main Street that there’s some quiet too. There are some restaurants in the area that are also walkable if you don’t want to go to Main Street for food.
- I was hosted in a 2 bedroom Deluxe Suite (that would normally fit up to 6 guests) at the Rundle Cliffs Lodge at Spring Creek Vacations and it was suuuper stunning!
Where to eat:
- Stirling Lounge / Creekside Patio at The Malcolm Hotel
- The Stirling Lounge / Creekside Patio at The Malcolm Hotel in Canmore is home to the largest patio in the Bow Valley! At over 3,000 sq. ft, and mountain and creek views all around you, this was a perfect spot for our first meal in town (well, our first of many, as you’ll see as you scroll, we did something of a Canmore Food (Take-out/Patio) Crawl to celebrate arriving in the mountain town!)
Where to eat:
- The Market Bistro
- I’ve been to The Market Bistro before on previous Canmore visits and just love it. It’s a bit out of the way (not in Main Street, but really, everything is pretty close in the Canmore area), and has an awesome patio (though we chose to do take-out back to our stunning room). Highly recommend The Market Bistro’s mushroom chicken pappardelle entree!
- Valbella Gourmet Foods Deli & Cafe
- I hadn’t tried Valbella’s Deli & Cafe before but have had their meats at different Canmore restaurants so I was excited to pop in and pick up some items to go. At our time of visit, the Canmore Uncorked Festival was going on so dozens of area restaurants were offering different deals. Valbella’s was a soup (we chose tomato), pre-made frozen meal (we chose Thai chicken curry—superb!), and dessert (a Pie Junkies pie). Would definitely recommend grabbing a few of their frozen meals to-go on your way out of town if where you’re staying doesn’t have a microwave. Also while you’re there it’s worth picking up meats as that is their specialty!
- The Mineshaft Tavern
- To round out our first night Take-out/Patio Food Crawl, we also picked up brown sugar roasted sticky side ribs in chili lime butter with chili infused honey and pickled red onion slaw from The Mineshaft Tavern (located near Rundle Cliff Lodge). Great! This tavern and the Stirling Lounge/Creekside Patio at The Malcolm Hotel are great walking distance locations if you’re staying in the Spring Creek Vacations area of Canmore.
Tuesday
Where to adventure:
- Do an art gallery crawl along Main Street in Canmore
- Something I didn’t realize until this visit to Canmore was just how many art galleries there are in walking distance along Main Street! Like, there are a LOT.
- From Avens Gallery to Fallen Leaf Art Gallery, Jeff Walker Gallery, Ken Hoehn Gallery, and the Carter-Ryan Gallery (this listing doesn’t even capture ALL the galleries!), a really fun activity to do along Main Street is take part in a little art galley crawl! Many of the galleries focus on wilderness, mountain, and animal/nature works, from real photography to incredible illustrations.
- I ended up purchasing three smaller canvas prints from the Carter-Ryan Gallery. I’ve admired Indigenous artist Jason Carter’s artwork style for some time now and was happy to bring his pieces home. Jason Carter and his business partner Bridget Ryan are actually from the Edmonton area (they both used to work in media at CityTV!) so I wanted to give them a little extra hometown support too.
- The pieces I got from Carter-Ryan Gallery are titled: “The ‘Bear-tage’, ‘What a Lovely Day, thought Mother Bear’, and ‘The Dreaming Bear at Lake Louise.’
More adventure ideas:
- Take part in a Scavenger-hunt style walking tour
- If intense mountain adventures are not up your alley, that’s okay just BEING in the mountain town is joyful enough, and exploring downtown Canmore at your own leisurely pace is a perfect getaway too. If you are hoping to stay more downtown rather than going out too far into the wilderness for your adventure, you might consider booking a Mystery Towns Canmore Tour which is essentially a scavenger hunt style, clue-solving adventure where you’re basically just walking around town, finding different landmarks and answering questions based on what you find. It’s a Tourism Canmore-approved excursion and it’s a lot of fun!
- I would recommend that if you are booking this adventure, you give yourself flexibility on time. The adventure itself is timed and you get points for how quickly and how well you can solve the puzzles, but we were trying to play while also planning to pick up ice climbing rental gear and go on a little hike and ice climb all in the same day/evening, which doesn’t really work. You want to give yourself time to play if you do book this Scavenger-hunt style walking tour!
Even more adventure ideas:
- Go ice climbing! (obviously only during wintertime, and with experienced climbers or guides)
- People are often surprised when they hear that I’ve been ice climbing. I get it, I don’t really look like your typical ice climber, and also, I’m definitely NOT your typical ice climber! Ha.
- I would never have ice climbed in the first place if my Canmore adventure friends James and Ashleigh hadn’t encouraged me back in 2019. They were already seasoned ice climbing pros and had a lot of the equipment, had gone many times, and so I truly trusted them. I would not advise ice climbing in the mountains WITHOUT experienced climber friends or hired guides! Safety first.
- This time around was actually my THIRD time ice climbing because I’ve also tried ice climbing the Ice Wall in Edmonton.
- Being so late in the season, staff at Gear Up, where we rented ice climbing gear to augment the equipment James already had, were surprised there was still ice to climb but you really had to hike for it… lol I should say, winter bushwhack / trudge through snow and hike for it.
- Ice climbing looks and feels scary until you actually do it. Once you do it it doesn’t *feel* like you’re very high up (lol maybe don’t look down!)
- I share other ice climbing tips in my Edmonton Ice Wall blog and First Time Ice Climbing / Things to Do in Canmore blog, so head there if you want more technical tips and know-how.
- I don’t really have the same thirst for the ice climb adrenaline / thrill that I think regular ice climbers have, lol, but I certainly enjoy doing it for the cool photos! Ha. Had we come a little later possibly, there could have been a gap behind the frozen waterfall we could’ve taken photos at as well, as ice starts to melt but of course melting ice also presents other challenges and risks.
- With any mountain adventure, PLEASE BE SAFE! With the pandemic in particular, more Albertans are experiencing more of the great outdoors and mountain-related adventures but they’re doing so without thinking safety first. I would simply never ice climb if experienced pro James was not leading the climb and ensuring my safety, lol. I would also simply not winter bushwhack without someone who has done the route before and knows how to get in and out. Please be mindful of this as you’re picking what hikes or mountain adventures to do!
Where to eat:
- Tapas Restaurant in Canmore
- We had a great meal at Tapas Restaurant in downtown Canmore, trying a bunch of different dishes (as you do at a Tapas-style restaurant).
- Highlights for me are their fun cocktails (peach pisco for me!), as well as their tuna, ginger, soy chili “tin” with crackers, plus gochujang prawns with garlic, ginger, and lemon. They have a lovely patio with twinkly lights and ample heaters, and it was just a really nice evening.
Wednesday
Where to stay:
(Leave Canmore to stay in Kananaskis!)
- Pomeroy Kananaskis Mountain Lodge
- The Pomeroy Kananskis Mountain Lodge is its own little resort nestled in Kananaskis Country.
- As it’s a bit tucked away, the Pomeroy Kananskis Mountain Lodge reminded me of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge in some ways, like it’s own resort with spa (not just any spa, NORDIC SPA!), on-site bars and restaurants, an indoor waterpark (many of these amenities are understandably closed or restricted due to the pandemic, so just check on what is open before you book), games room, outside activities (they’re basically partnered up with Kananaskis Outfitters, which rents out different adventure equipment and offers different guided tours too) and more.
- The Pomeroy Kananskis Lodge describes itself as a place “where backcountry beauty and luxury meet.” Located just an hour from Calgary and about 30 minutes from Canmore, if you’re looking for a more secluded escape, this is the place to be!
- We were hosted in their Bi-Level Luxury Loft and it was just fantastic. The lodge is just steps away from the Village Rim Trail which is a paved loop that offers up some incredible views of Kananaskis Country (more on that below!)
Where to adventure:
- Walk or bike around Kananaskis Village via Village Rim Trail
- I was excited to learn that there is a PAVED walking trail that presents stunning views of Kananaskis Country, in an area that still has cell service! lol. A lot of areas in Kananaskis do not have service, but because the Village Rim Trail goes around Kananaskis Village, it does! So you can immediately post photos from your beautiful walk if you like, lol. This paved trail is 1.3 km and is a loop (love loops!) and also has 5 designated view points of the area. You can very easily walk it or you even easier—bike it (e-bike or fat bike rentals from Kananaskis Outfitters).
- If you’re not staying at the hotels in Kananaskis Village, you can still access the Village Rim Trail, or a few others, and there’s ample public parking spots at the Village too.
- Other “easier” trails you can access from this point include Terrace Trail North or South.
- You’re also not far from Troll Falls, Barrier Lake, Evan Thomas Waterfalls, and what I’m told is “the most demanding and impressive day hike in Kananaskis Country—Mt. Allan and Centennial Ridge. (This one is NOT a Linda-friendly, casual Instagram adventurer’s hike, lol).
Another spot to adventure:
- Hike to Heart Creek Bunker
- My Canmore adventure friends James and Ashleigh recommended a Hike to Heart Creek Bunker as one of this week’s adventures as they deemed it Linda-friendly, lol. This is about a 4 km hike with 212 m elevation (not a loop—go out/up/and then turn back). It’s located between Canmore and Kananaskis just off the main Highway 1 (the Lac Des Arcs turn-off). And has become increasingly popular over the years, since some news articles came out about the Cold War-era bunker built into the side of the mountain.
- Check out this great CBC story about the history of the bunker—which is also known as The Bow Valley Bunker, and was apparently meant to store top secret documents—but in hindsight, would not have been a good place to store documents because of how damp and cold it can get, lol. The bunker is built on the slope of Mount McGillivray, and measures about 55 meters into the mountain. So this adventure knocks off a few things—first time in a Cold War-era bunker, first time in a pitch-black cave, first time in the side of a mountain. Check, check, check!
- You NEED to bring lights to explore this cave. Headlights and I would recommend flashlights (James’ flashlight was much stronger than my headlight, I thought). It really gets pitch black immediately and it would not be a fun experience with no lights. The cave itself is actually quite spacious, like I think you could fit maybe 8-10 people across the width of the tunnel comfortable, so it’s quite a large cave. There are juts or “rooms” that were built out and then they just kind of stopped construction at a certain point so you run into a dead-end pretty quick.
- We saw some firecrackers and glass bottles during our visit, and the CBC story sort of confirms that the cave is sometimes used as a party spot. There’s also graffiti all over the cave walls (one just says HELP lol very creepy, another is a neat pink alien-like head).
- When I posted about this visit, some people told me they like to bring tea and snacks to the cave and then sit down for a cave picnic! A group we hiked past on our way up told us it wasn’t anything special, but I thought it was really neat. There’s not a whole lot to do in the cave other than walk to the dead-end and take photos (or plan to settle in and eat), but again, how often do you get to say you’ve been in an abandoned bunker, cave, and inside a mountain.
- This is technically considered a family-friendly, easy hike, but the elevation does get ME lol and so may get you. Do-able, but as someone who is rather out of shape, I needed to pause a fair bit of times to catch my breath, lol. Hiking poles are also definitely recommended here (depending on when you go, some of the hills/slopes may be slippery).
- Alberta Mamas also recently blogged about the hike to this abandoned bunker if you’d like more tips for your adventure.
Where to eat:
- Patio brunch at Chez Francois in Canmore
- Ugh I cannot say enough lovely things about patio brunch at Chez Francois in Canmore! Before we transitioned from Canmore to Kananaskis, we decided to hit the. Chez Francois patio to indulge in their crepes and bennies!
- Chez Francois offers a Crepe + Benny Combo that’s a great deal. I also am obsessed with their apple cider mimosa with a cinnamon sugar rim. I also got their duck pate croissant to go. Yum!!
- Take-out (dinner) at Forte Restaurant at Pomeroy Kananaskis Lodge
- After a day of adventures, we ordered take-out for dinner from Forte Restaurant at Pomeroy Kananaskis Lodge.
- Forte was also offering a combo deal for Canmore Uncorked Festival, so we got one of the Uncorked combos + an extra pizza. It was a perfect meal following a hard-for-me (lol) hike, adventure in a cave, and fat-biking.
- What we ordered:
- Fried Brussels sprouts with chili flakes, caper dressing and pecorino cheese.
- Braised Short Rib Pappardelle with housemade pappardelle pasta, mushroom cream sauce, pulled Alberta short rib and truffle. Just wonderful, though I would rank The Market Bistro’s pappardelle with chicken and mushroom a notch higher than this ribs version. That creamy sauce though, I could and basically drank it up.
- Quattro Carne Wood-fired Pizza – that’s right, a FOUR meat pizza with tomato sauce, spicy chorizo, pepperoni, prosciutto, salami, and red onions. Salty, meaty, goodness.
Thursday:
Where to eat:
- The patio (lunch) at Forte Restaurant at Pomeroy Kananaskis Lodge
- Once you’re in Kananaskis area, your dining options are a bit limited, and if you’re staying at one of the three hotels in Kananaskis Village, the hotel restaurants will end up being your closest and likely most frequent source for food when you’re not outdoor adventuring.
- While our previous night’s dinner from Forte was done as take-out in our room, for this day’s lunch, we decided to hit the lovely patio at Forte.
- The Forte Restaurant patio includes a bunch of fire tables which are what they sound like, tables with fire down the middle so you can easily stay warm. For us, it was a hot day anyway, so the fire wasn’t needed.
- As mentioned, I truly believe dining with mountain views makes your meal better—regardless of how delicious your meal was to begin with. Forte’s mountain views are no exception.
- What we ordered:
- Salmon Poke Bowl with iceberg lettuce, salmon, avocado, edamame beans, red cabbage, micro sprouts, nori, carrots, and a delicious sriracha dressing. This was a phenomenal bowl!!
- House Roasted Turkey Club Sandwich with smoked paprika aioli, bacon, tomato, arugula, jack cheese and roasted turkey on a ciabatta. Excellent!!
- Sea salt and Malt Chicken Wings with Blue Cheese Dip. The wings were crispy and meaty, but I wouldn’t say the sea salt and malt flavour (or the blue cheese flavour) really jumped out.
Where to adventure:
- Book a Family Survival Hike through Kananskis Outfitters
- I was really excited to go on a guided Survival Hike led by Kananaskis Outfitters during this trip. The hike is 2-3 hours in the beautiful outdoor ‘classroom’ that is the Canadian Rockies. You go on a leisurely 5 km hike (or snowshoe) through a forest and along the way learn about wildlife, spot animal tracks, learn about different plants and trees, learn what to do if you encounter a bear, and most fun of all—learn how to start a fire without a lighter and learn how to create a basic shelter!
- At time of writing this, the Survival Hike is limited to one family or co-hort at a time (and is great for kids age 5+ but younger kids can be accommodated). They initially offered this to international families coming into Alberta but with the pandemic, expanded it to any family who wanted to book.
- My tour guide was Dayna, who was really great! Super knowledgable, funny, and a great teacher. You hope you’ll never find yourself in a situation where you need to set up an emergency shelter or start a fire, but it’s neat to learn how. I also would recommend coming into this with a lot of questions too! They’ll have prepared things to tell you but I found it great to have someone to ask directly a bunch of silly and serious wilderness / survival questions to, lol.
- I don’t want to spoil lessons learned in case you end up booking but I will say, from what I learned, the most important things you should bring with you on any hike but particularly hikes where you’ll be going in no service zones—water, food, layers (proper clothing), compass or map. I would say some kind of knife or cutting tool is helpful too.
- The guided hike is a flat fee of $400 for up to 8 people, so it works out to about $50 per person.
Friday:
Check out and head home! You could certainly fit a few more adventures in on a Friday before you say goodbye to your amazing mountain escape, but at this point you’re probably pretty tuckered out and ready to get back to reality anyway, ha! Usually on my way home from a Canmore Kananaskis-area adventure, I like to plan stops in Calgary too to get some food before I actually end up back home but in this case, I was beat and wanted to get back to my fur babies.
What a week!
Thank you to Tourism Canmore Kananaskis for hosting my April 2021 visit to the area.
Even if you don’t spend a full week, feel free to pick and choose some adventure and food activities to help create your own itinerary. Regardless, honestly, even if you just book a nice hotel or vacation home and just sit on the patio surrounded by the mountains, that’s going to be a really great time too.
Please note: don’t travel even within the province if you’re sick. Stay home if you’re sick! And if you are an Albertan exploring within Alberta, please abide by current COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Also please note: at the time of writing this post (April 2021), the United Conservative Party government had announced it was trying to make enjoying Alberta’s beautiful outdoor spaces more expensive and inaccessible by introducing access fees to Kananaskis Country where there were none before.
I’m pretty frustrated about this, as one of the things I was going to write in this blog post was how there are so many amazing things you can do in the mountains even before you hit a National Park—how amazing is Alberta!—and now… well, hopefully there will be enough pushback that they reverse their decision. It baffles the mind that our leadership, this terrible government, would rather put these costs on Albertans who are already struggling with pandemic effects and not, say, cut the budget of their ridiculous and expensive $30 million War Room. Although I guess it’s not surprising given this government’s track record.
Kenney’s government has tried to spin these fees as improving infrastructure so Albertans can enjoy Kananaskis Country for years to come, which hey, would be great however this is the same government that cut $24M /year from the Alberta Parks budget. The new fees will raise around $15M. So he’s trying to offset costs on Albertans after cuts he made to the parks system already. Not to mention $1.5B he lit on fire for the Keystone XL, and that again, that $30M for the War Room. I’m also told that the “conservation officers” that have been mentioned as being hired to help maintain parks are part of a rural policing strategy, so more just police related calls less actually improving Kananaskis Country. 🤷🏻♀️ 🤬🤯
You can also sign a petition to help reverse the fees (as of writing this, there were nearly 10,000 signatures), though I’m never sure how effective online petitions are, any bit of getting loud and pushing back helps.
—
Be sure to check out my other travel guides from the area:
- Know Before You Go To The Blackshale Suspension Bridge and Kananaskis Lake
- E-Biking Calgary and Canmore / Banff, Alberta
- Swing, Rope, and Paddle Adventure at Johnson Lake Alberta (Banff National Park)
- 7 Things To Do in Canmore, Alberta
- A Few Things To Do in Canmore, Alberta
- Exploring Alberta’s Bubble Lake (Abraham Lake)
- Rocky Mountain Cross-Country Ski Trails and Bubble Lakes
- Everything you Need to Know to Visit Moraine Lake and Hike Larch Valley in Banff National Park
- View all of my Alberta Travel Guides
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Disclaimer: my week in the mountains was hosted by Tourism Canmore but this blog post was not part of the agreed partnership. I just thought audiences would find the blog post useful as you plan your adventure!
