7 Must-See Spots Across the Canadian Rockies and Alberta
If you've ever stood at the edge of the Canadian Rockies and felt the pull of the open road, this one's for you.
Banff and Canmore sit at the gateway to one of the most spectacular stretches of landscape on earth. Most visitors see it through a car window. A few lucky ones see it from the seat of a motorcycle.
At Askiwa Motorcycle Tours, we run guided rides out of Canmore, Alberta — right at the door of Banff National Park. We've ridden these roads hundreds of times, in every season that the mountains allow. And we never get tired of them. Here are the seven spots we'd send every first-time visitor to — and the ones we come back to, every single tour.
1. Banff National Park — The Starting Line for Everything
Every great journey through the Canadian Rockies begins here. Banff National Park covers 6,641 square kilometres of Rocky Mountain wilderness and it's Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885.
But statistics don't do it justice. What does justice is riding into it just after sunrise, when the peaks catch that first light and the valley is still quiet. The townsite of Banff offers everything a traveller needs: restaurants, gear, culture, and hospitality. But the real reason people come is the land itself.
The mountains don't care how many times you've seen them. They still take your breath away.
From our base in Canmore, Banff National Park is the first page of every tour we run.
Why it's better on a motorcycle: The curves into Banff on the Trans-Canada don't open up the same way from inside a car. On a bike, you feel the altitude change in your chest, the temperature drop as you enter the valley. It's immersive in a way that nothing else is.
Banff National Park
2.The Icefields Parkway — One of the Greatest Roads on Earth
You'll find lists on every travel site about "the world's most scenic drives." The Icefields Parkway appears on all of them and it belongs there.
Running 232 kilometres between Banff and Jasper, this road passes through some of the most untouched alpine terrain in North America. Glaciers, turquoise lakes, waterfalls, elk on the road shoulder — it's all here.
The Columbia Icefield alone is one of the largest accumulations of ice south of the Arctic. It takes most car tourists two to three hours to drive through. On a motorcycle tour, we take our time.
What to expect: Cool temperatures even in summer (dress in layers), wildlife crossings, and stretches of road so empty and beautiful you'll find yourself going slower just to stay in them.
From our tours: The Icefields Parkway features in our Buffalo Path 5-Day Tour and is the centrepiece of our Iron & Stone 6-Day Fairmont Loop. If you only ever ride one road in Canada, make it this one.
The Columbia Icefield, Jasper National Park
3.Highwood Pass — Canada's Highest Paved Mountain Pass
This one surprises people. Most visitors to Banff and Canmore never make it to Highwood Pass. And that's exactly why it's one of our favourites.
At 2,206 metres above sea level, Highwood Pass is the highest paved mountain pass in Canada. The road curves through alpine meadows, past sweeping ridgelines and boulder fields, with almost no traffic and no crowds. It's wild, it's quiet, and it's extraordinary.
Because the pass sits in Kananaskis Country rather than inside Banff National Park, it doesn't get the same tourist foot traffic. Which means, on a weekday in July, you can ride it with nothing but the wind and the mountains for company.
One important note: The road is closed to vehicles from December 1 through June 15 each year to protect wildlife. Plan accordingly.
From our tours: Highwood Pass is a highlight of the Buffalo Path 5-Day Tour itinerary — one of those moments on the road that guests still talk about months later.
Kananaskis Country
4.Canmore — The Town That Gets It Right
Canmore doesn't try to compete with Banff. It doesn't have to.
While Banff draws millions of visitors each year, Canmore has quietly built something rarer: a mountain town with real character. Local cafés, independent restaurants, artists' studios, and a community of people who came for the mountains and never found a reason to leave.
For motorcycle travellers, Canmore is the ideal base. The town sits at the mouth of the Bow Valley, with the Three Sisters peaks rising above it to the south. From here, you can ride into Banff in twenty minutes, drop into Kananaskis in thirty, or push south through the Cowboy Trail toward Waterton.
Askiwa Rides is based here. Every tour we run starts and ends in Canmore — and we think that's fitting. It's a place that rewards the curious, not just the camera-ready.
Canmore, Alberta
5.The Cowboy Trail (Highway 22) — Alberta in Its Purest Form
Most visitors to the Canadian Rockies don't venture east toward the foothills.
That's their loss. The Cowboy Trail — officially Highway 22 — runs south from Cochrane all the way to the Montana border. It passes through rolling ranch country, working farms, big prairie skies, and small Alberta towns where the pace of life still matches the landscape. It's a different kind of beautiful. Quieter. Wider.
The Rockies watch from the west as you roll through land that has been worked and respected by ranching families and Indigenous communities for generations.
What makes it ride-worthy: Long, open straights give way to subtle curves through the foothills. The light in the late afternoon turns the whole thing gold. It's the kind of road that slows you down in the best possible way.
From our tours: The Buffalo Path 5-Day Tour rides the Cowboy Trail as part of its southbound route, connecting the Rockies to Waterton. It's one of the sections guests least expect — and often end up loving most.
Alberta Foothills
6.Waterton National Park — Where the Prairie Meets the Mountains
Waterton is different from any other place in the Canadian Rockies.
It sits at the intersection of three ecosystems: the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and the Columbia Forest. The result is a landscape that doesn't look like anywhere else. Mountains rise abruptly from flat prairie with almost no transition — the visual effect is dramatic and immediately striking.
Waterton Lakes National Park is smaller and quieter than Banff. It shares a UNESCO World Heritage designation with Glacier National Park across the border in Montana as the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park — the first of its kind in the world. The town of Waterton itself is tiny — a few hundred residents — and feels genuinely untouched. Come for the lakes, the wildlife (bears, bighorn sheep, deer), and the sense that you're somewhere authentically unspoiled.
From our tours: Waterton serves as one of the southern waypoints on our Buffalo Path 5-Day Tour. Many of our guests have never heard of it before the tour. Most say it's one of the highlights of the entire trip.
Waterton National Park
7.Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump — 6,000 Years of History
Of all the stops on our tours, this is the one that tends to shift people.
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is one of the oldest and best-preserved buffalo jumps in the world. For more than 6,000 years, the Blackfoot people used this cliff — and the specific geography of the land around it — to hunt bison.
The site is extraordinarily well-preserved, and the interpretive centre built into the cliff face is one of the finest Indigenous cultural museums in Canada. Standing at the top of the jump, looking out across the foothills toward the mountains, you realize you're in a place where human history and the land are completely intertwined. It's a real life museum.
Why we include it: At Askiwa, we are an Indigenous-led company. Our name comes from the Cree language. The land we ride through isn't just scenery to us — it carries history, stories, and relationships that go back long before the roads were built. Head-Smashed-In is one of the clearest ways we can share that perspective with our guests.
It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More importantly, it's a place that stays with you.
Fort Macleod
The Best Way to See All Seven? Ride Them.
On a motorcycle, these places aren't backdrops — they're the experience.
The cold morning air on the Icefields Parkway. The sound of silence at the top of Highwood Pass. The huge sky opening up as you roll down the Cowboy Trail toward Waterton.
At Askiwa, we've designed our tours to move through this country the way it deserves — slowly enough to feel it, guided by people who know it deeply, and fully supported so the only thing you have to think about is the road ahead.
Our tours run from late May through early September, starting in Canmore and covering routes through Banff, Kananaskis, the Cowboy Trail, Waterton, and beyond.
See the Buffalo Path 5-Day itinerary