Canada Guide
Alberta and the Rockies
Banff National Park
BANFF NATIONAL PARK is the most famous of the Canadian Rockies' parks and Canada's leading tourist attraction – so be prepared for the crowds that throng its key centres, Banff and Lake Louise, as well as the best part of its 1500km of trails, most of which suffer a continual pounding during the summer months. That said, it's worth putting up with every commercial indignity to enjoy the sublime scenery – and if you're camping or are prepared to walk, the worst of the park's excesses are fairly easily left behind. The best plan of attack if you're coming from Calgary or the US is to make straight for Banff, a busy and commercial town where you can pause for a couple of days to soak up the action and handful of sights, or stock up on supplies and make for somewhere quieter as quickly as possible. Then head 58km north along Hwy-1 to Lake Louise, a much smaller but almost equally busy centre with some unmissable landscapes plus readily accessible short trails and day-hikes if you just want a quick taste of the scenery. Two popular hwys within the park offer magnificent vistas: the Bow Valley Parkway from Banff to Lake Louise is a far preferable route to the parallel Hwy 1 (Trans-Canada), and the much longer Icefields Parkway leads from Lake Louise to Jasper. Both are lined with trails long and short, waterfalls, lakes, canyons, viewpoints, pull-offs and a seemingly unending procession of majestic mountain, river, glacier and forest scenery.
Mount Norquay
Mount Norquay ( 
403/762-4421, 
www.banffnorquay.com ) is the closest resort to Banff, just 6km and ten minutes' drive from downtown. Skiing started on the mountain's steep eastern slopes in the 1920s. In 1948 it gained Canada's first-ever chairlift, immediately gaining a reputation as an experts-only resort thanks largely to horrors like the double-black diamond Lone Pine run. This reputation has only recently disappeared, the result of a complete revamp and the opening of a new network of lifts on and around Mystic Ridge to provide access to intermediate terrain and 31 runs suitable for all levels of skiers and boarders alike.
As a result Norquay is now equally renowned for its uncrowded beginners' slopes as for its expert runs, the terrain breaking down as follows: Novice (20 percent), Intermediate (36 percent) and Expert (44 percent). The average snowfall is 300cm, and there's snow-making on ninety percent of the terrain. The season runs from December to mid-April. The highest elevation is 2133m, giving a vertical drop of 503m to the resort's base elevation at 1636m. Amenities include a visitor centre, ski school, rental shop, day-care and – on Fridays – the promise of night skiing. Lift tickets are around $53 a day.