's Tunnel Mountain Hike
Tunnel Mountain is a very popular hike and showshoe outing. whether your in town for awhile and jog up for a morning work out routine or visiting with the family, the steady switchbacks make for an easy accent of Tunnel Mountain. It can be done in winter and summer time, snowshoes might be helpful if a large dump of snow came the day before but generally the steady stream of visitors keeps the trail compacted and easy to walk on. As you near the top you are greeting with amazing views of the valley below and the massive peaks above. While still having trees on its summit, once it is reach the entire Banff townsite panorama is visible.
How to get to Tunnel Mountain?
Once in the Banff Townsite, head east on Wolf St. until you come to a T intersection, hang a right on Grizzly St. and stay left as the road splits ahead. A few hundred meters and you will pass Wolverine St and the parking lot for Tunnel Mountain will appear on your left hand side.
Tunnel Mountain Hike Trip Log
Once parked at the parking lot. The trail starts immediatly behind the lot and heads up hill as soon as it starts. The trail heads up through the trees and starts making long sweeping switchbacks.
After a few minutes of walking up hill through the switchbacks you come to a quaint little viewpoint over looking the valley below. The trail continues upwards once again and crosses over Tunnel Mountain Drive.
As you cross over the road the official trailhead for the Tunnel Mountain hike/snowshoe trail starts. There is a small parking lot up here as well but the recommended lot is the one at the bottom of the hill as this one is more for the stop on the side of the road tourist that gazes at the view.
The trail continues to take long switch backs along the mountain side as it ascends. The trail narrows subsatantially but is still easy to walk on and not very steep. Even on slightly higher elevation there is still so much local traffic on here that snowshoes are not required even in winter most times as long as you stay on the path.
Once the trail makes a final u turn there are numourus viewpoints along the northeast edge. The trail does widen at this point
GPS Plotted Route
From the GPS overlay on the map you can see where the trail crosses Tunnel Mountain Drive again. Since it is more so parking for a viewpoint its recommended to not pack it up with cars and part at the bottom in the designated parking lot for Tunnel Mountain.
While it looks a little steep the trail is only 2km long one way with plenty of switchbacks to help you along.
If there is any change to the route you feel others should know about, shoot us an e-mail from our contact page.
