Frozen Canyon Icewalks: Johnston, Maligne and Grotto

There is a category of winter activity in the Rockies that requires no skill, no fitness beyond a normal walk, and delivers something you will remember for years: walking into a canyon where the waterfalls have frozen mid-fall.

Johnston Canyon, Banff

The most popular winter walk in the park, on the Bow Valley Parkway between Banff and Lake Louise. A catwalk bolted to the canyon wall takes you to the Lower Falls at 1.1 km and the Upper Falls at 2.7 km, both frozen into blue columns from about late December.

The catwalks are icy. Not slightly, genuinely icy. Ice cleats are essential, and people who arrive without them either turn back or fall over. They are rentable in Banff and Canmore for a few dollars.

Go early. The car park is full by ten on a winter weekend and the walk is much better without a queue on the catwalk.

Maligne Canyon, Jasper

Deeper, narrower and, unlike Johnston, you walk on the canyon floor rather than above it, between fifty metre walls with frozen falls overhead. It is the more dramatic of the two by some distance.

It is also the one to do with a guide. The floor route requires the ice to be properly formed, and a guided trip supplies cleats, knows which sections are safe that week and gets you into the parts you would not find alone.

Grotto Canyon, Canmore

Outside the national parks, on the Bow Valley Trail near Exshaw. A flat creek-bed walk into a narrowing canyon with frozen falls and, further in, Indigenous pictographs on the canyon wall that are hundreds of years old. Treat them accordingly: look, do not touch.

Shorter and easier than the other two, and much quieter.

What to bring

• Ice cleats or microspikes. The single most important item.
• Warm layers, since canyons hold cold and you will be in shade.
• A headlamp if you are going late.
• Poles, if you use them. The floor of a canyon is uneven under snow.

Safety, briefly

Do not walk on frozen water you have not been told is safe. Ice above you falls, particularly on warm afternoons and after a chinook. Stay off closed sections, which are closed because something came down.

Doing it from Calgary

Johnston Canyon and Grotto both make comfortable half days from Calgary; Maligne is a Jasper trip. All three are best early, which means leaving Calgary in the dark on a winter road.

We run fixed-rate icewalk days to Johnston and Grotto with a pickup that gets you to the trailhead at opening, and we can add cleat rental in Canmore on the way through.