I have been to Banff and Jasper but never west of there. I am renting a car on approx. Oct. 4-2005 in Vancouver and driving to Banff. Just looking for opinions on which route to take. Wondering about going from Vancouver to Jasper and then down to Banff as opposed to the more southern routes. Time is not an issue. Looking for the most scenic.
Thanks

Hello warrsher,

I would favour the route through Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley and then up to the TransCanada Highway and east from there. The stretch of road from Revelstoke to Lake Louise is beautiful. Actually, the whole way from Salmon Arm, on the shores of the Shuswap Lake, to Lake Louise is great. Between Revelstoke and Golden you drive over Rogers Pass.

The route I have suggested will have you doing the Icefields Parkway (Hwy #93) between Lake Louise and Jasper twice, once northbound and once southbound. That is as worthwhile a repetition as I know. Actually it isn't even a repetition, because the scenery looks surprisingly different when it's viewed from opposite directions.

Hope that helps.

Is this a oneway trip? Where do you end up? That would help with the decision as well.

If you are looping back to Vancouver, then do both routes - one in each direction! If you are only going one way, I would do the southern route.

We are also doing the same trip during the last 2 weeks of September. How will the weather be?
(We have 10 days to see Western BC out to Jasper/Banff.)
Thanks,
Pete & Wendy

Hello Pete and Wendy,

Here is the Weater Base web site on which you can look up monthly weather statistics for different towns and cities. This link is to the Banff page:

http://www.weatherbase.com/weather/w...147&refer=

Weather Base's figures are based on the last 70 years.

You can also use the Trip Planning feature of the Weather Underground's web site. It gives you statistics for only the last 5 years, but it gives them for the exact dates you request.

For example, if you want to know the temperatures from September 15th to September 30th, you discover the following information about Banff in the last 5 years:

Average daily high : 58 deg F

Average night-time low : 35 deg F

But if there is one thing I can tell you about Banff it is the fact that the averages are almost meaningless. As Mark Twain said, if you have one foot in a bucket of boiling water and the other foot in a bucket of freezing water, your feet on average are comfortable. So you need to know the extremes you might experience during a given date range.

In the last 5 years, Banff's highest high in that date range has been 80 deg F, and its lowest low has been 18 deg F.

Vancouver's temperature swings are not so great. For that date range:

Average daily high : 63 deg F

Highest high : 77 deg F

Average nightly low : 51 deg F

Lowest low : 42 deg F

To check what the Trip Planner has to say about other cities and dates, you can go to:

http://www.wunderground.com/tripplanner/index.asp

I prefere the following route:

Vancouver - Whistler - Lillooet - Wells Gray PP - Jasper - Banff.

Thanks for all the responses and I should have said it is a one way trip as we are flying from Halifax to Victoria and spend 5 days in Victoria and then drive to Banff staying in Banff for 5 days and then go to Calgary to fly back to Halifax. I have family in Victoria and Banff.
Thanks
Warren Sheridan

Thanks Judy!
P&W