Kootenay National Park Travel Guide

The Kootenay National Park Travel Guide describes everything you need to know about visiting this Canadian Rockies park that lies on the British Columbia side of the Continental Divide.

Shaped like a lightning bolt, this narrow 140,600-hectare (347,300-acre) park’s northern section is bordered by Banff National Park and Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park to the east and Yoho National Park to the north. Highway 93, extending for 94 kilometres (58 miles) through Kootenay National Park, provides spectacular mountain vistas.

Along Highway 93 you’ll find many short and easy interpretive hikes, scenic viewpoints, hot springs, day-use areas, and roadside interpretive exhibits. Kootenay National Park isn’t particularly noted for its day-hiking opportunities, but backpacker destinations such as Floe Lake and the Rockwall rival almost any other area in the Canadian Rockies. Even if you never leave the highway, the scarred hillsides from wildfires that swept through Kootenay National Park numerous times between 2001 and 2019 will be obvious. The fires jumped the highway in places, burnt bridges and information booths, and forced the closure of trails due to the danger of falling trees.

Kootenay National Park has the fewest services of the four contiguous mountain national parks. Day-use areas, a lodge, and three campgrounds are the only roadside services inside the park. The small service town of Radium Hot Springs, at the junction of Highways 93 and 95 near the park’s southwest gate, has a permanent population of well under 1,000 but offers a range of accommodations, cafes and restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores (see the Columbia Valley Travel Guide for details).