Winter Wildlife in the Rockies: Easier to See, Harder to Reach

Winter is the best wildlife season in the Canadian Rockies and almost nobody plans a trip around it. The leaves are down, animals stand out against snow, and they concentrate at low elevation where the food is, which is exactly where the roads are.

What you can reasonably expect

Bighorn sheep. The easiest. They come to the roadside for grit and salt, particularly on the Lake Minnewanka loop, Highway 40 in Kananaskis and around the Jasper townsite. Groups of twenty are common.

Elk. Concentrated on valley bottoms all winter. Banff townsite fringes, the Bow Valley Parkway, and the Athabasca Valley in Jasper.

Deer, both mule and white-tailed. Everywhere, and easy to overlook.

Moose. Harder, but reliable in the willow flats: Vermilion Lakes, the wetlands along Highway 93A, and around Maligne Lake Road.

Wolves. The prize. The Bow Valley pack works the river flats and their tracks are all over the snow. Seeing one is luck, but winter is when the luck is best.

Coyotes, foxes and pine martens. Frequently seen, especially early morning.

Where to be, and when

First and last light, always. The middle of a winter day is dead. In practice that means being on the Bow Valley Parkway or the Minnewanka loop at sunrise, which in January is a civilised eight in the morning, and again at four in the afternoon.

The Icefields Parkway in winter is superb for wildlife and needs to be treated seriously as a drive.

The rules that matter

Parks Canada asks for 30 metres from most animals and 100 metres from bears, wolves and cougars. In winter the reason is not only safety: every calorie an animal spends running from you is one it cannot spend surviving until spring. Disturbing wildlife in winter costs it more than at any other time.

• Stay in the vehicle. It is the best hide and the safest place.
• Never feed anything. A roadside sheep that has learned to approach cars gets killed by one.
• Do not block the traffic lane. Pull fully off or move on.
• Give tracks a wide berth and do not follow them.

Photography

A long lens is not optional if you want frame-filling animals at a legal distance. Cold eats batteries: keep spares inside your coat. Shooting white snow needs positive exposure compensation or everything comes out grey.

Going with a driver

The best viewing hours are the darkest driving hours, and stopping safely on a snowy mountain road to watch something is a decision that wants a professional making it. A chauffeured wildlife morning means you are looking out of the window from first light instead of concentrating on the ice.

We run dawn and dusk winter wildlife drives from Calgary, Canmore and Banff, at a fixed rate, with heated vehicles and chauffeurs who know where the herds have been that week.