Lake O'Hara

Lake O’Hara is famous for two things: its gorgeous alpine lakes, and the brutally competitive bus reservation system you have to beat to get anywhere near them.

Logistics and Planning

Getting There: Lake O’Hara is located in Yoho National Park, just off the Trans-Canada Highway near Lake Louise. Personal vehicles are not permitted on the access road — you must take the Parks Canada shuttle bus or hike the 11 km road in.

Permits: There are two ways in. If you’re camping, your campground booking — released on a single day in the winter (February 10 for 2026) — includes a spot on the shuttle, so you only need to win one lottery. Day hikers have it rougher: the day-use shuttle goes on sale once a year and sells out within minutes, one of the most sought-after bookings in the Canadian Rockies.

Lodging: There are three very different ways to stay overnight at the lake. The most affordable is the Parks Canada campground, 30 tent pads tucked into the trees along the lakeshore — where we set up home for the weekend. With many facilities and bus access, it’s not quite backpacking, but it’s not car camping neither. It’s more like glamppacking.

At the other end is the historic Lake O’Hara Lodge, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1926 and still running today. And somewhere in between sits the Alpine Club of Canada’s Elizabeth Parker Hut, a rustic log cabin in the meadow above the lake offering shared bunks to hikers and climbers. Each comes with its own fiercely competitive reservation system, so pick your poison.

Trails: There is an extensive network of trails around Lake O’Hara, including:

• Lake O’Hara Shoreline
• Lake Oesa
• Opabin Plateau
• Alpine Circuit
• McArthur Pass

When to go: The best time to go is July through late September. We went in early July after a heavy snow year: the lower trails were fine, but the higher alpine routes were still snowbound, and the Alpine Circuit wasn’t safe to attempt. If you want the full network of trails open, mid-to-late summer is your best bet.

What to pack: Since you take the bus in, baggage is limited to one large bag or two small bags per person (max 55 lbs / 25 kg), so pack light. We brought our usual backpacking kit — tent, sleeping bag, pad — plus a backpacking stove, since all cooking and eating has to happen in the campground’s central area for bear safety. The campground has real facilities: food lockers, cooking shelters, and treated water on tap. There are even trash cans, so unlike a typical backcountry trip, you don’t have to pack out your garbage.

Our Itinerary:

We hiked to Lake O’Hara early July 2026. It was a fairly short trip, but it packed in a lot of the park’s highlights. After a heavy snow year, it was too early in the season to attempt the Alpine Circuit safely, so we did some shorter day hikes into the surrounding areas instead.

Day 1: We were booked on an 8:30am bus departure from the parking lot, so we had to show up bright and early. When we arrived, they handed each of us a small green token to use as our return bus ticket, so we stashed it somewhere safe right away.

We set up camp at the Lake O’Hara Campground. The warden told us to go and grab an empty campsite and let him know which one we took.

The campground is small — 30 tent pads, each with a gravel pad for a single small tent and a numbered, bear-proof food locker for stashing our food. The communal area in the middle has two covered cooking shelters with wood-burning stoves, a fire pit, and outhouses with treated water. Compared to other trips I’ve done, it’s backcountry luxury: you still cook on a backpacking stove, but there’s a dry, warm place to do it if the weather turns, access to water, and even trash cans.

With camp sorted, we headed out on the ~8 km round trip to Lake McArthur, taking the high route in and the low route out. The trail climbs about 310 m, but the payoff is one of the bluest lakes in the Rockies.

On the way, we passed the Alpine Club of Canada hut.

The lake itself is still half frozen, but the highlight of the day was finding a mini Canada flag at the lake to celebrate Canada Day!

We also stopped to check out some of the foliage along the trail. It had been a pretty wet start of summer, so there was a ton of wildflowers and mushrooms!

We also met a chipmunk by the lake.

We ended the day at the campground’s evening naturalist talk about cougars.

Day 2:

We started the day at the Le Relais day shelter to ask about conditions — and to snatch a carrot cake before it ran out.

The warden hut sits by the day shelter at the lake.

Then we did the morning hike up to Lake Oesa — 6.6 km round trip with about 240 m of gain — which was also still frozen.

Our favourite part of this trail wasn’t actually the destination but the small lakes along the way. Lake Victoria especially — the water was this unreal, vivid blue, like the sky had spilled straight into the lake.

We tried to spot what’s left of the hut at Abbot Pass, but I think it’s obscured from Lake Oesa. That hut has a pretty interesting history. Swiss guides working for the Canadian Pacific Railway built it in 1922, perched at nearly 3,000 metres right on the Continental Divide between Mounts Lefroy and Victoria. It was the second-highest permanently inhabited building in Canada, and climbers headed up those two peaks used to bunk down in its stone walls. It even got named a national historic site in 1992. Unfortunately, thawing permafrost — made worse by the 2021 heat dome — kept eating away at the slope beneath it, and Parks Canada dismantled the hut in 2022. There’s just a ruin on the pass now.

After that, we went to the Lake O’Hara Lodge for their famed afternoon tea, which is open to non-lodge guests for about $30 per person. Don’t expect anything fancy here, but it was an opportunity to chat with some folks while enjoying fresh fruits, baked goods, and of course, a warm drink.

We finished the day hiking to Opabin Prospect, where we saw lots of marmots and other wildlife!

Day 3: We took it easy on our last day, catching the bus out around 10am — right as the weather turned rainy — and getting back to the parking lot in time for a well-deserved lunch in Canmore.

Three days felt like the perfect amount of time to spend at the campground. There were a few more hikes we could have done, but the snow made a lot of the alpine routes impassable at this time.