Alberta is famous for its vastness. And to anyone who looks long enough, Canada's west reveals what it otherwise holds back - from the white buffalo of the Métis to a mountain with a cave hidden inside it, all the way to a via ferrata in British Columbia that only a helicopter can reach.
Something rustles in the undergrowth. Between the trunks a pale shape shimmers, too big for a deer, too pale for anything that belongs here. Then he steps out, not thirty metres away: a bull moose, gleaming white down to his hooves, with a mighty rack of antlers. He raises his head, tests the air, holds still. Then he turns away and merges with the forest, without a sound.
It all began hours earlier, with Lilyrose Meyers, 75. Reverently she runs her hand over the rough timber of a log cabin from 1868. “I lived in a house like this for the first ten years of my life, most of the time with my grandmother. She taught me beadwork,” she says. Five and a half years ago she was asked whether she would pass on her knowledge here as a Knowledge Holder.
Lilyrose is the heart of Métis Crossing, Canada's first major Métis cultural centre, an hour and a half by car northeast of Edmonton. The Métis are descendants of European fur traders and Indigenous women; their ancestors hunted beaver, mink and bison, and the pelts travelled to London and Paris as hats.
Lilyrose speaks of her ancestors' buffalo hunt with quiet pride. “We had strict laws. Anyone who charged ahead had his saddle and bridle cut through the first time.” For a mounted hunter that was a demotion, in honour and property alike.
A quarter of an hour further on, in a fenced pasture the size of several football pitches, there they stand: bison, massive bodies in shaggy fur, heavily horned. A bull can weigh up to a thousand kilograms, the head alone close to thirty.
A few kilometres further on, Lilyrose opens a squeaking metal gate. Behind it graze some seventeen white bison, cream-coloured in the sun, a rarity. For only one calf in ten million is born white.
For many Indigenous peoples this animal is the most sacred of all. In the Cree worldview the white bison embodies Wahkohtowin, the interconnectedness of all life.
In July 2024 a wall of fire triggered by lightning reached the town of Jasper and set it ablaze. Around 25,000 people fled westwards. It was the largest fire in the national park in a hundred years and left thousands of burnt tree trunks behind. And that is something to go and look at? Oh yes.
“It feels as if I had X-ray vision,” says forest guide Nic Gosselin, letting his eyes wander across the ground. “I see things I never saw before.” He points to ridges and hollows that the dense forest normally swallows; to narrow trails that game have trodden over the years. A deer on the opposite slope, which would have stayed invisible in the green thicket, lifts its head.
Nic picks up two pine cones, one closed, one burst open. “The lodgepole pine seals its cones with resin,” he says. “Only the searing heat of a fire cracks them open and scatters the seeds on the ground.” Such stand-renewing large fires are part of the natural cycle; experts estimate that here they recur roughly every one to three centuries.
Between the charred trunks, greenery already stands hip-high, and among it the purple glow of the willowherb, known here as fireweed.
Nic raises a finger in the air and listens. “Since this week the grasshoppers are chirping again,” he says, nodding to me with a smile. “Here you can watch a forest start over. Something new every week.”
Rat’s Nest Cave beneath Grotto Mountain near Canmore is one of Canada's longest caves, with more than four kilometres of explored passage.
After an hour's hike an inconspicuous gullet gapes in the rock: the entrance. We pull on overalls and helmets, switch on our headlamps, and the daylight stays behind.
Just past the entrance we rappel down, cave guide Annie Hewitt leading, cave buddy Bruce Marpole behind. From now on there is no light any more, only the cones of the lamps.
A few metres on lies a pit full of bones. The oldest are more than 7,000 years old; researchers have identified more than thirty mammal species here, wolf and black bear, lynx and wolverine, fallen in and left lying for millennia. The mountain forgets nothing.
Then the passage widens into the Grand Gallery, the largest chamber in the cave. No trace of tightness - this is where the mountain breathes.
Down here, in the oldest hidden layer of this country, the white moose of that first morning comes back to mind. Alberta is famous for its vastness and yet keeps the best hidden just below the surface - for anyone who climbs down, waits patiently, looks long enough.
When we leave the gullet again, the daylight hits us like a blow, glaring and warm at once. Everything looks as it did before: mountains, forest, trail. But now it is clear what lies beneath. And that the white moose at the forest's edge was a whim of chance - and an invitation to look closely.
White buffalo, a forest starting over after the fire, and a cave that forgets nothing: Alberta shows its best stories to those who look closely. On the official Travel Alberta website you will find travel ideas from the Rocky Mountains to the prairie, Indigenous experiences such as Métis Crossing, practical tips on getting there and on the seasons, plus routes for your own road trip through Canada's wild west. Plan your Alberta adventure now.
We know where to go. We know the best places to stay. And we know the local partners who turn a trip into something unforgettable. That’s why when we design your journey, it isn’t just a holiday. It’s a story you’ll carry for life.
Our mission is simple: to inspire you to explore the world with curiosity, optimism, enthusiasm, and respect. To connect with cultures, to marvel at breathtaking landscapes, and to embrace the beauty of untamed nature.
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Three places, three ways beneath the surface.
We know where to go. We know the best places to stay. And we know the local partners who turn a trip into something unforgettable. That’s why when we design your journey, it isn’t just a holiday. It’s a story you’ll carry for life.
Our mission is simple: to inspire you to explore the world with curiosity, optimism, enthusiasm, and respect. To connect with cultures, to marvel at breathtaking landscapes, and to embrace the beauty of untamed nature.
So, tell us — what once-in-a-lifetime adventure may we design for you?
Here, deep in the east of British Columbia, everything has to be reached by helicopter. One has just brought me in twenty minutes to Cariboos Lodge at 1,100 metres. All around now 7,000 square kilometres of high mountains, more than 500 glaciers, no road, no house, no one - apart from the lodge.
It was never meant to be comfortable. In 1965 the Austrian Hans Gmoser launched the world's first commercial heli-skiing in the Bugaboos. As soon as the snow melted, his lodges stood empty. In the summer of 1978 the first hikers took off here, today more than 3,000 a year.
“We can make this experience possible for people who otherwise would not be physically able to have it,” says guide Fridjon Thorleifsson. For anyone who can still manage the horizontal but has trouble with the vertical, the helicopter does the work.
The next morning I stand at the edge of the North Canoe Glacier. Pink streaks run through the hollows in the furrowed ice. They are snow algae, colouring the firn from pale pink to carmine. Then comes a rumble, deep and dry, like a thunderstorm inside the mountain. It turns into a roar that will not break off: ice is breaking from the glacier and falling towards the valley. The sound fills the cirque and stays in my stomach for a few minutes.
Shortly afterwards a white-tailed ptarmigan runs across the scree, wings dragging as if injured. A distraction manoeuvre: this is how the hen lures attackers away from her chicks.
The next day. The sun stands above the Cariboo Mountains, not a cloud far and wide. Erich Unterberger says: “Put on your rain gear. Trousers, jacket, everything.” Nobody argues with him. Erich came here from Austria in 1987 and is heading for his thirty-ninth winter season. An hour later Zillmer Canyon shows why Erich insisted on the rain gear. A glacier-fed waterfall has sawn a gorge into the granite here, and the via ferrata leads straight into it. Iron rungs in the rock, a steel cable alongside, helmet on, two carabiners on the harness. We clip in and from this moment on we are a rope team. The ascent begins.
After the first bend the world tips. The rock turns wet, then slick, then loud. White banners of meltwater lash against the wall, the spray hangs horizontally in the air and leaves no part of the body dry. I press myself against the reddish patterned granite, grasp the next rung, set my foot, move the clip. Rung, foot, carabiner. Rung, foot, carabiner. I have no wish to interfere in this battle of the elements, only to pause humbly now and then, to marvel, take a picture and then climb on. Besides, talking is pointless, the waterfall swallows every word.
Only once, on the wire-rope traverse above the chasm, does Erich turn round and laugh. And there, where the spray meets the sun, a rainbow spans the gorge. Then, up on the rock ledge, it stops. The noise stays behind below us. In front of us a valley opens as if cut out: green meadows, a silver ribbon of river, dark conifers, and behind them grey ridges with the last snowfields. We walk on. And higher.
In the afternoon we wait for the helicopter, more than seven hours after clipping in, a thousand vertical metres higher, still far below Mount Zillmer. Erich turns thoughtful. “You don't see a single sign of civilisation here,” he says, looking into the valley. “To be alone in this huge landscape and have your peace. I really do think this is another world.”
In Alberta the best lay hidden just below the surface, and I had to climb down to see it. Up here, though, everything lies open. The helicopter takes the ascent off your hands, but not the battle of the elements, the wet, the breathlessness, the sheer effort of rung after rung. Nor the humility. It takes hold of anyone who stands up here and, wherever they look, sees only one thing: wild, untouched nature.
As a guest you can only reach Cariboos Lodge at 1,100 metres by helicopter. That was exactly the idea of Hans Gmoser, who invented commercial heli-skiing and did not want his lodges standing empty in summer. Today CMH flies its guests up onto ridges, across glaciers and into the via ferrata of Zillmer Canyon - including those who would otherwise never get up there. The helicopter gives you the ascent. The wonder you have to bring yourself.
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