3 Best Sights in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia

A layer of rock deposits containing amazingly well-preserved fossil specimens, Burgess shale formations were first discovered in 1886 by a railway worker in nearby Yoho National Park. Subsequently in 1909, Smithsonian Institute paleontologist Charles Walcott started collecting and analyzing specimens. The current site at the base of the Stanley Glacier in Kootenay was not discovered until 2012 and contains fossils with clearly visible details of the bones and insides of creatures from the underwater ecosystem that existed for a short time after the first explosion of multicellular life on earth over 505 million years ago. The Burgess shale fossils are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.

A definite highlight of Kootenay National Park, Marble Canyon trail starts immediately from the parking lot at the side of Highway 93. The short hike (1.4 km [.87 miles] with minimal elevation) takes you across seven bridges that criss-cross the deeply carved limestone gorge, as the torrential glacial blue waters rush downward far below. At the top of the trail, you can see a small waterfall on the river, right where it drops into the canyon.

The paint pots are a geological formation formed by rich deposits of iron oxide that bubbles up from mineral springs, resulting in liquid with pigments ranging from red to orange to brown. The area is sacred to the Ktunaxa people, who have gathered the ochre liquid to color their clay and paints since ancient times. By the early 1900s, European settlers also started to mine the pigments for manufacturing paints. This mining stopped when the area became a park in 1920, but the paint pots continue to bubble the brightly colored pigments to the surface.