4 Best Sights in Outside Banff National Park, Banff National Park

About 25 km (15 miles) southeast of Banff, Canmore became a modest boomtown with the 1988 Olympic Games. Many of its residents feel that the commute to Calgary for work is a fair trade-off for living in the mountains. For tourists, Canmore makes a good base for exploring Kananaskis Country and Banff National Park.

Three provincial parks make up the 4,200-square-km (1,600-square-mile) recreational region known as Kananaskis Country, whose northern entrance is 26 km (16 miles) southeast of Canmore. The area includes grand mountain scenery, and though it's not quite a match for that in the adjacent national parks, Kananaskis allows some activities the parks prohibit, including snowmobiling, motorized boating, and off-road driving. There are also spectacular cross-country and mountain-biking trails.

The main route through Kananaskis Country is Highway 40, also known as the Kananaskis Trail. It runs north–south through the front ranges of the Rockies. Only the northern 40 km (25 miles) of the road remain open from December to mid-June, in part because of the extreme conditions of Highwood Pass (at 7,280 feet, the highest drivable pass in Canada), and in part to protect winter wildlife habitats in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. Highway 40 continues south to join Highway 541 west of Longview. Access to East Kananaskis Country, a popular area for horseback trips, is on Highway 66, which heads west from the town of Priddis.