2023 Lake O'Hara
Lake O'Hara is at 6600 ft elevation in Yoho National Park just west of Lake Louise in Banff National Park. To get into it, one hikes, or preferably, takes a bus up the 11 km paved access road. Lodge guests get a nice bus that goes once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. Campers and Hikers get a couple of Yoho National Park buses that go every 90 minutes or so. The Park buses are limited to 200 people a day and are sold out as soon as they open for booking in the spring. The Lodge is equally difficult to book so we were very fortunate to fill in for our neighbours.
The map shows the main hiking trails, several of which we did in our 4 night stay:
1. Hike to Lake Oesa (pink line)
2. Snowy hike to Morning Glory lakes (blue line) after giving up on the trail to Cathedral Lakes (black line; different Cathedral Lakes than those in the Provincial Park in southern BC of the same name).
3. Hike into the Opabin basin in six inches of fresh snow (green line in the bottom right of center)
Other available hikes which we didn't do are to McArthur Lake (gray line middle bottom) and an alpine circuit through Wiwaxy Gap and shelves on Mts Huber and Yukness. Alpine climbers can go over the continental divide to the Abbott Pass Hut (yellow line on the right) then descend to Lake Louise.