Share a celebration dinner with your Travel Director and fellow travellers at the Fairmont Banff Springs. The meal provides a hosted occasion to exchange stories and toast the landscapes and experiences of the Rockies.

Inspired by Scottish baronial architecture, this historic Banff hotel lends a distinctive setting to the gathering. A menu highlighting regional Canadian ingredients connects the evening’s dining with the place you have come to explore.

Step onto the glass-floored Glacier Skywalk during an after-hours visit near the Columbia Icefield. The cliff-edge walkway projects above the Sunwapta Valley, opening views across a landscape of steep rock faces, waterfalls and distant ice.

The transparent floor brings the depth of the valley sharply into focus, while the quieter evening setting leaves room to absorb the panorama. This is a distinctive way to experience the geology and scale of the Icefields Parkway corridor.

Explore highlights of Yoho National Park, including a view of the Lower Spiral Tunnels. Built in the early 20th century, the looping railway tunnels helped trains navigate the steep grade of Kicking Horse Pass.

When seasonal conditions permit, view Takakkaw Falls, where glacier-fed water plunges down a sheer mountainside. The name comes from Cree and is often translated as “it is magnificent.” The falls are typically visited from June to October.

• 8 Breakfast (B)
• 3 Dinner (D)
• 3 Lunch (L)

• Visit Banff National Park • Lake Louise • Jasper National Park • Moraine Lake • Icefields Parkway scenic drive • Maligne Lake • Sunwapta Falls • Athabasca Falls

• Icefields Parkway: Enjoy an after-hours visit to the amazing Glacier Skywalk. Step onto the cliff-edged, glass-floored walkway rising 918 ft (280 meters) above the Sunwapta Valley offering sweeping views of the valley and Columbia Icefield.
• Icefields Parkway: Enjoy an evening reception at the Glacier View Lodge. After dinner, step out onto the viewing deck and marvel at the evening sky, relax with a drink in the library or hang out inside the Moraine Lounge.
• Icefields Parkway: Take a seat in a specially designed Ice Explorer for a visit onto the Athabasca Glacier before other travellers arrive. Follow your Local Expert as you stroll on its icy surface and experience the enormous glaciers up close. 

Insight Vacations

• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• Premium regional accommodation and overnight train
• Business class coach with extended leg room, and train travel

Travel the Icefields Parkway through 232 kilometres of glacier-carved valleys, turquoise lakes and towering Rocky Mountain peaks. The route offers a sustained view of Alberta’s alpine wilderness, with the Columbia Icefield among its defining sights.

This vast expanse of ice feeds rivers that ultimately reach the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The scenic journey is an opportunity to appreciate the scale of the Canadian Rockies and the forces that shaped them.

Cruise Maligne Lake on a narrated boat trip through one of Jasper National Park’s most photographed landscapes. Watch forested shores and jagged peaks unfold around the long, glacier-fed lake as you travel towards Spirit Island.

Accessible by boat, the small island is celebrated for its setting against the surrounding mountains. Commentary adds context to the scenery while the quiet water offers a different perspective on Jasper’s wilderness. This cruise operates seasonally.

Visit Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park and see the Athabasca River surge through a narrow, rock-walled gorge. Viewpoints offer chances to watch and photograph the churning water and the canyon it has carved.

The falls are known for the force of their flow rather than their height. Against the surrounding forest and mountains, the sound of rushing water makes this a vivid encounter with the Rockies’ glacier-fed river system.

Raise a glass at a champagne welcome reception at Glacier View Lodge, overlooking the Columbia Icefield. The lodge’s mountain setting makes the ancient ice and surrounding peaks part of the experience.

Enjoy a Canadian-inspired dinner with glacier views, featuring locally sourced ingredients at Altitude Restaurant. With six mountain ranges framing the landscape, the meal offers time to take in the scale and changing light of the icefield from a warm, welcoming setting.

Ride a specially designed Ice Explorer onto the Athabasca Glacier before the usual crowds arrive. With a Local Expert, step onto its icy surface and see the Columbia Icefield’s glacial landscape at close range.

The early access creates space to appreciate the textures and vastness of the ice. Part of the largest icefield in the Canadian Rockies, the Athabasca Glacier offers a tangible encounter with the natural forces that continue to shape these mountains.

Pause for photographs at Moraine Lake when seasonal access permits, taking in its vivid blue water and the peaks of the Valley of the Ten Peaks. At Lake Louise, admire the turquoise shoreline beneath the rugged mountains and Victoria Glacier.

These celebrated Banff National Park views reveal how glacial sediment gives many Rocky Mountain lakes their striking colour. An included lunch at the Fairmont Château Lake Louise provides more time to enjoy the lakeside setting.

Take a scenic drive through Banff National Park with visits to the Hoodoos and Surprise Corner. See the unusual, slender rock formations shaped by erosion, and look out towards the Bow Valley from one of Banff’s well-known viewpoints.

Surprise Corner offers a memorable perspective on the Fairmont Banff Springs, set among forested slopes above the river. Together, the stops show two sides of the park: its changing natural geology and its historic mountain resort setting.

Walk through boreal forest with an Indigenous Local Expert in the Banff area. Learn how local plants have been used for food, healing and survival, and hear how wildlife features in ecological knowledge and oral traditions.

The experience offers an Indigenous perspective on a landscape often viewed only for its scenery. Take part in a tobacco smudging ceremony and learn about its significance as an expression of purification, respect and gratitude to the land and ancestors.

Choose to explore the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff. Its artworks and artifacts reveal the people, cultures and ideas connected to life in the mountains, from creative expression to the region’s evolving relationship with its environment.

Founded by local artists and philanthropists Peter and Catharine Whyte, the museum offers a cultural perspective alongside the tour’s natural sights. This is one of two included Insight Choice activities in Banff.

Choose to join a hotel ambassador at the Fairmont Banff Springs and hear stories from the landmark’s long history. Discover how the hotel became part of Banff’s identity as a mountain destination.

Opened in 1888, the château-style hotel has welcomed notable guests including King George VI and Marilyn Monroe. Its grand spaces and Scottish baronial-inspired architecture reflect an era when railway travel helped introduce visitors to the Canadian Rockies. This is one of two included Insight Choice activities.

Travel aboard the Rocky Mountaineer from Banff to Vancouver, with an overnight stay in Kamloops. Watch the scenery shift from snow-capped peaks and mountain passes to the drier British Columbia interior, river canyons and the green Fraser Valley.

Along the rail route, look for the Spiral Tunnels, Rogers Pass, Craigellachie—where the Canadian Pacific Railway’s last spike was driven—and the rushing waters of Hell’s Gate. Onboard service and meals make the changing landscape the focus of this two-day rail experience.

Opt for a float trip on the Athabasca River in the Jasper area. From the water, take in the forested banks and mountain scenery at a gentler pace than the region’s road journeys.

The river carries water from the Rockies through a landscape shaped by glaciers, offering a different vantage point on Jasper’s wilderness. This optional experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; ask your Travel Director for availability and activity details.

Choose a Banff Gondola ride for an elevated view of the Bow Valley and the peaks surrounding the town. The ascent offers a broad perspective on the mountain landscape explored at ground level throughout Banff National Park.

From above, the meeting of forest, valley and alpine slopes becomes especially clear. This is an optional experience at additional cost and bookable on tour, subject to availability and operating conditions.