Healy Pass is one of the best trails in Banff National Park, taking you through fields of wildflowers in the summertime or groves of golden larches in the autumn and ending with spectacular views of the Rocky Mountains. If you want to explore this incredible hike for yourself, here’s everything you need to know about the Healy Pass Trail.
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About Healy Pass Trail
- Length: 11.1 miles
- Elevation gain: 2,903 feet
- Difficulty: Hard. To be honest, when my husband, Justin, and I hiked this trail, we didn’t think there was anything particularly challenging about this trail, other than the length—the elevation gain is quite moderate and consistent throughout the trail and there aren’t any technically challenging parts of the trail.
- Dog friendly? Dogs are technically allowed on the trail, but must stay on the leash. It’s not unusual to see grizzly bears in this area, though, so you might want to consider leaving your pup at home for this one.
- Trail map
How to get to the Healy Pass Trail
The Healy Pass Trailhead is located here at Sunshine Village in Banff National Park near Banff, Canada, about 20 minutes west of the town of Banff or 35 minutes west of Canmore.
To enter Banff National Park, you’ll need to pay an entrance fee. It’s $11 CAD per person for a daily pass in the park or $75.25 CAD for a Parks Canada Discover Pass (i.e., the Canadian equivalent of the America the Beautiful Pass, which gets you into the national parks for a year!).
Once you’re in the national park, the drive to the trailhead is well-paved. My husband, Justin, and I have spent a decent time around Banff, exploring its hiking trails, and were BLOWN AWAY when we pulled into the Sunshine Village parking lot—it’s absolutely MASSIVE as compared to most of the trailheads in the area, given there’s a ski lodge and hotel here. So you shouldn’t have a hard time finding parking most days, which is more than I can say for pretty much any other trail in Banff.
If you don’t happen to have a car with you in Banff, there’s actually a free daily shuttle that runs directly between downtown Banff and Sunshine Village.
From the Sunshine Village parking lot, you’ll walk around the right side of the ski lodge and eventually see a sign for the trailhead and a wooden bridge on the left hand side.
What to expect along the Healy Pass Trail
From the trailhead sign, you’ll cross over the wooden bridge and reach a wide dirt path.
After about five minutes, the trail splits, with the fork to the left heading uphill and the fork to the right heading downhill. You’ll want to take the trail to the right, heading downhill into the forest.
From here, you’ll be hiking through a pine tree forest for, approximately, the next four and a half miles. The incline is gradual and consistent, but you will encounter a few small rolling hills along the way.
There are some interesting features to the trail, like sections where there’s a clearing that allows you to see the mountain peaks overhead and a handful of wooden bridges that you cross over. But, to be honest, the views along this portion of the trail are primarily of the pine trees and other greenery of the forest.
About 4.6 miles into the trail, the forest will clear and you’ll be hiking through a meadow, with the Rocky Mountains towering above and dense groves of larch trees on either side.
If you’re unfamiliar with larch trees, they’re one of only a handful of deciduous conifers, whose needles turn a brilliant shade of gold every autumn before falling to the ground in the winter. There’s a handful of hikes around Banff that are awesome to see the larch trees, like the Floe Lake Trail, but the Healy Pass Trail is inarguably one of the best of them!
Once you reach this clearing, the trail gets increasingly steeper for the last mile as you climb your way up to Healy Pass. Luckily, the view keeps getting better and better with every step you take.
At the top, you’ll have stunning views of the surrounding Rocky Mountains and Mummy, Scarab, and Pharoah Lakes. When we visited, the views here were SO gorgeous—the vibrant gold larch trees stood in stark contrast to the blanket of snow that was on the ground and the surrounding mountains were all dusted with white snow.
Once you’re done taking in the views here, simply turn around and retrace your steps back to the trailhead.
When to visit the Healy Pass Trail
Given Healy Pass’ high elevation, the trail has a relatively short season where it’s ice and snow free, generally from the middle of June until the end of September.
As noted above, we visited in the first week of October and, even at that point, there was a decent amount of ice and snow on the trail, starting around mile 4, all the way up to the Pass. So, if you’re visiting in the shoulder season, I’d highly recommend bringing along trekking poles and microspikes to help provide additional traction, in case you encounter any ice or snow along the trail.
Otherwise, if you’re visiting during Banff in the summer, you’re in luck! The trail is at its most beautiful in July, when the meadows you cross, for the last mile or so, are ablaze with colorful wildflowers.
Alternatively, if you want to see some incredibly unique fall foliage, the larches along the trail in mid- to late September are absolutely gorgeous.
Tips for visiting the Healy Pass Trail
You have multiple options to extend your hike
Healy Pass is a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure kind of trail.
Many hikers simply hike up to Healy Pass and turn around to head back to the trailhead. However, there’s tons of trails that you could continue on here, including the Monarch Rampart Route, the Egypt Lake Trail, and the Healy Pass Park Route, if you’re interested in even more of a challenge or doing a multi-day backpacking trip.
Egypt Lake has a backcountry campground that we’d definitely be keen to visit the next time we head to Banff.
You can camp along the Healy Pass Trail
There’s a backcountry campground, called the Healy Creek Campground, that’s located 3.3 miles from the Healy Pass trailhead.
Given the relatively short distance from the trailhead to the campground and the consistent elevation gain, this would be a great trail to try your hand at backpacking for the first time (pssst… if you’re new to backpacking, be sure to check out our backpacking gear list for beginners). Additionally, this campground could serve as a good basecamp if you want to explore some of the other longer trails that branch off at Healy Pass.
To stay here, you’ll need to pick up a permit on Parks Canada online reservation system.
Be bear aware
This area is home to both black and grizzly bears. Be sure to be up to speed on bear safety tips and have bear spray with you, just in case.
Wear waterproof boots
Before visiting this trail, we had read that it was supposed to be incredibly muddy—and, boy, were those reports accurate! We encountered several ENORMOUS mud puddles that were challenging to navigate around.
So I’d highly recommend wearing waterproof boots (this is the pair that Justin uses and loves and this is the pair I swear by) and wearing pants that you don’t mind getting muddy.
You will encounter a lot of trail runners
Given the trail’s consistent elevation gain and relatively even surface, this is a super popular trail for runners.
So make sure that you’re paying attention to others on the trail (i.e., I wouldn’t recommend wearing headphones here) and move out of the way of the runners.
Healy Pass is definitely one of our favorite hikes in Banff in the autumn—I hope you love it as much as we did! Do you have any questions about this trail? Let us know in the comments below.
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