Alberta

Alberta offers hiking to turquoise glacial lakes, world-class skiing (Banff, Lake Louise), paddling, wildlife watching, and exploring dinosaur badlands. Banff and Jasper national parks, Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, the Icefields Parkway, Waterton Lakes, and Dinosaur Provincial Park anchor it.

Summer (July–September) gives reliable trail access and peak lake color; the Icefields Parkway is spectacular. Fall brings golden larch and elk rut; winter offers world-class skiing and frozen-canyon ice walks.

Grizzly and black bears, gray wolves, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats inhabit the mountains, where wildlife overpasses on the Trans-Canada Highway are a global conservation model; the badlands hold one of the world's richest dinosaur fossil beds.

Montane valleys, subalpine forest, and alpine tundra stack with elevation in the Rockies, giving way to foothills, boreal forest in the north, and prairie grassland in the southeast.

The Canadian Rockies — built of ancient sedimentary rock thrust into dramatic layered peaks — rise in the west, with glacier-fed turquoise lakes colored by rock flour, the Columbia Icefield, and the eroded, dinosaur-bearing badlands and prairie to the east. Mount Columbia (3,747 m) is the high point.

The Blackfoot, Cree, Stoney Nakoda, and other First Nations have lived here for thousands of years. Banff, established in 1885, was Canada's first national park, and Alberta became a province in 1905.

A deep mountain-town and ski culture (Banff, Lake Louise), growing Indigenous tourism, and the dinosaur and ranching heritage of the badlands define the outdoors.

Anchoring the Yellowstone-to-Yukon vision, Alberta's conservation centers on wildlife corridors, glacier retreat, grizzly recovery, and managing intense visitation in the mountain parks.

Calgary International (YYC) is about 90 minutes from Banff; Edmonton serves the north and Jasper. A Parks Canada pass is required, and Moraine Lake now requires a shuttle reservation.

Serious bear country — carry bear spray and store food properly. Avalanches, glacial streams, fast-changing mountain weather (snow any month), and never walking on glaciers unguided are key cautions.

A Parks Canada pass is required and drones are banned in national parks; Moraine Lake requires a shuttle reservation, and backcountry trips need wilderness permits.

Carry bear spray, and stay 100 m from bears and 30 m from elk.

Reserve the Moraine Lake shuttle and park lodging well ahead, drive the Icefields Parkway, and hit Lake Louise at sunrise to beat crowds. Carry bear spray, and visit larch valleys in late September.

Alberta borders British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Montana, linking Banff and Jasper with Yoho, Kootenay, and Glacier National Park across the U.S. border.