Winter Rockies Day Trip: Lake Louise, Johnston Canyon and the Icefields Parkway

The Canadian Rockies in full winter dress, covered in a single day out of Calgary. Crampons go on at Johnston Canyon, where the trail climbs past waterfalls locked solid by the cold and through forest weighed down with snow, an ice walk that feels closer to a small expedition than a stroll. Lake Louise comes next, frozen over from shore to shore and looking every bit the fairytale setting visitors are promised. From there the route picks up the Icefields Parkway, regularly counted among the most scenic drives anywhere in the world, and follows it past two very different bodies of water: Bow Lake, fed directly by glacier melt, and Peyto Lake, whose outline reads unmistakably like a maple leaf. Four landmark stops, one of the great mountain roads, and not a kilometre of winter driving left for you to handle.